Mexican President Vicente Fox ordered Mexican army troops and federal agents to detain all 700 officers of the Nuevo Laredo police force June 13 and assume policing duties in the town, just across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas. The move, which came in response to a breakdown of law and order in the city, will be extended to other border towns, authorities said. It is indicative of the serious deterioration in the security situation along the U.S.-Mexican border.

Assailants killed Nuevo Laredo Police chief Alejandro Dominguez on June 8, just nine hours after he took over the job. Dominquez was not accompanied by a personal protection detail at the time, meaning he was either arrogant, naive about crime in the city, or under the protection of one of the city's criminal gangs who then betrayed him. One of Nuevo Laredo's many drug cartels might have killed him to make the statement that the cartels, not the police, control the city.

A federal investigation of Dominguez's killing caused tensions to risebetween federal officers and local police, and on June 10 shooting eruptedbetween the two groups, leaving a plainclothes federal agent wounded. InChihuahua city, capital of the border state of Chihuahua, three gunmenassassinated the operations chief of police on June 13.

Corrupt police, growing anti-U.S. sentiment in Mexico and a war ragingbetween rival drug gangs have made the border increasingly dangerous for U.S. citizens and corporations. Mexican National Police reported 550drug-related homicides in Mexico in the first five months of 2005, most ofthem occurring in towns along the border. In Nuevo Laredo alone, more than 60 killings related to organized crime have occurred, seven police officers among them.

Nuevo Laredo is a battleground for several rival drug gangs, most notablythe Juarez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, a cartel from western Sinaloa state,and the Gulf Cartel from Matamoros. As the cartels battled over turf, theyhave infiltrated Nuevo Laredo's police force and placed corrupt policeofficers on their payrolls.

Growing anti-U.S. sentiment in Mexico, stoked by election-year rhetoric and negative publicity over a group of American vigilantes that organized its own border patrol in Arizona, also contributes to a dangerous situation for Americans on the border. To further complicate the situation, the so-called Minutemen are soon to expand their activities from Arizona into New Mexico and Texas.

In one sign of the increasing anti-U.S. sentiment, officials in the bordercities of Tijuana and Mexicali recently revoked permission for U.S.corporations to bring U.S. security details into the country, sayingsecurity must be provided by Mexicans. The city officials invoked a federallaw against such practices, although U.S. embassy officials who contactedthe Mexican government on behalf of U.S. corporations were unable to verify the existence of such a law. In any case, if the law does exist, it was not enforced before mid-May. Many U.S. firms with dealings in Mexico are now scrambling to find trustworthy Mexican companies to provide security for their personnel.

Few Mexican security firms, however, meet U.S. standards. These companies consist of former police officers or off-duty officers who possibly continue to maintain corrupt relationships with organized crime. At the same time, Mexico offers no reliable process for conducting background checks on these officers, suggesting that the only way to ensure reliable security is to develop a personal relationship with a local firm over time. In the meantime, U.S. corporate personnel are facing a higher risk of falling victim to crime in Mexico.

American tourists visiting U.S. border cities also are facing increasedthreats. Dozens of reports have appeared over the past 18 months of U.S.citizens going missing in Mexico during short trips across the border. Withthe increase in activity by drug gangs, many of the missing likely ran afoulof organized crime. Mexican police so far have proven ineffective at solving the disappearances.

With drug wars raging on both sides of the border -- and law and orderbroken down in Nuevo Laredo to the point in which the army has been sent in -- the U.S.-Mexican border has become a dangerous place.

Mexican President Vicente Fox recently deployed some 1,500 soldiers and federal police agents to Nuevo Laredo and seven other lawless cities in an operation that will be expanded in coming weeks to other parts of Mexico. However, the Fox government's "Operation Safe Mexico" will fail to dismantle Mexico's powerful drug cartels or contain escalating violence associated with rival drug-trafficking organizations' permanent efforts to rule Mexico's $50 billion-a-year illegal-drug industry. Moreover, an emerging crack-cocaine epidemic will drive Mexico's crime rates sharply higher in coming years.

Analysis

The government of Mexican President Vicente Fox recently launched "Operation Safe Mexico," deploying more than 1,500 army soldiers and federal police agents June 13 to the northern cities of Nuevo Laredo, Matamoros, Reynosa, Culiacan, Mazatlan, Mexicali and Tijuana to confront drug crime.

Mexico's crime-related national security crisis will be the biggest political issue in the country during Fox's final year in power until presidential elections scheduled for July 2, 2006, and will have a spillover effect on U.S. states bordering Mexico. Complicating things for Mexico, the crisis will intensify during a period in which Mexican economic growth will be slowing. In the face of these challenges, Fox's efforts to stymie the drug trade and its associated violence will fall short and will be complicated by an emerging crack-cocaine epidemic.

Fox initially deployed troops in the Mexican states of Tamaulipas, Baja California, Sinaloa and Sonora. Officials with the Mexican Attorney General's office, however, said deployments soon would expand to the state of Mexico, Mexico City (the federal district) and several states in southern Mexico, reportedly including Chiapas, Guerrero and Yucatan.

A presidential spokesman described Operation Safe Mexico as a two-pronged initiative. One part of the plan calls for aggressive deployments of troops and federal agents to secure cities with roadblocks, accompanied by vehicle searches and heavily armed patrols intended to suppress criminal activities. The second part calls for wholesale purges of corrupt police at the local, state and federal level. Thousands of police officers likely will be fired in the purge. While Mexican Foreign Ministry spokesmen routinely dismiss U.S. criticism of Mexico's security problems as an unwelcome intrusion in Mexican affairs, a spokesman for the Attorney General's office acknowledged recently that drug traffickers have corrupted and penetrated practically every local and state law enforcement agency in northern Mexico. The corruption also extends to federal police, generally afflicting law enforcement across the country.

At least seven major Mexican drug-trafficking organizations operate along the U.S.-Mexican border. Fox launched Operation Safe Mexico to end a vicious war between these rival drug cartels that began in 2003 after the dismantling of the Tijuana cartel upon the death and arrest of the cartel's two top leaders, Ramon and Benjamin Arellano-Felix. The chief combatants in this cartel war include Osiel Cardenas, the jailed leader of the Gulf cartel who is battling an alliance of drug traffickers that includes Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman of the Sinaloa drug cartel, Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada and Juan Jose "El Azul" Esparragoza.

Mexican federal anti-drug officials estimate that close to 1,500 people have been killed in the cartel war since 2003. During roughly the same period, about 1,750 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq. Since the beginning of 2005, Mexican police agencies have tallied more than 600 killings related to the war between the rival cartels. Human rights groups, on the other hand, estimate the warring cartels have killed close to 900 people in the first six months of 2005.

Cardenas and the Gulf cartel control the drug trade in northeastern Mexico, which is headquartered in Nuevo Laredo. Cardenas also is trying to seize control of drug-trafficking routes and activities in Baja California and Sinaloa, controlled until 2003 by the Arellano-Felix family's Tijuana cartel. However, Guzman's Sinaloa drug cartel and his associates Zambada and Esparragoza oppose Cardenas' bid for control of Baja California and Sinaloa. This group, the Sinaloa alliance -- also known as "the federation" by some Mexican police officials -- in turn is trying to wrest control of Nuevo Laredo's drug trade from Cardenas and the Gulf cartel.

Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana represent the strategic prizes in Mexico's drug-cartel wars. The U.S.-Mexican border crossing at Laredo-Nuevo Laredo accounts for 38 percent of total U.S.-Mexican trade. More than 10,000 trucks and 1,200 rail cars per day cross the four bridges joining Laredo and Nuevo Laredo in both directions. Tijuana ranks No. 2 in terms of cargo volume and cross-border traffic after Nuevo Laredo. There are close to 2,000 transportation and customs-brokerage companies between Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo. Whichever drug cartel controls these cities, including their local police forces, controls the Mexican drug-trafficking industry along the entire U.S.-Mexican border.

The impact of Mexico's security crisis over the coming year on U.S. states such as Texas and California that border Mexico will be greater. The resources of local law enforcement in U.S. communities and counties abutting the U.S.-Mexican border will come under increasing strain by Mexican drug-related violence that spills into U.S. territory. The integrity of local U.S. law enforcement in the border area also will face an increasing challenge from Mexican drug traffickers seeking to corrupt police in the United States, just as they have done with Mexican police.

Mexico's security crisis and election-year uncertainties also will cause foreign companies to postpone or cancel investment projects in Mexico over the coming year. Such fallout will come along the lines of Toyota Motor Corp.'s recent cancellation of a $445 million project in northern Mexico because of security concerns. Instead, the Japanese automaker will build its new factory, employing 1,500 people, in Ontario.

Mexico's crime-related security crisis will continue to increase over the coming year before the scheduled July 2, 2006, presidential elections for several reasons. First, the Fox government does not have the law enforcement resources to battle an illegal narcotics industry that produces more revenue than oil exports. Mexico's illegal drug trade generated more than $50 billion in revenue in 2004 for the country's drug cartels, while oil exports the same year totaled slightly more than $21 billion. These totals afford Mexican drug barons the firepower and cash flow to kill and corrupt law enforcement.

Second, Fox lacks the political capital to persuade the Mexican Congress to pass tougher anti-crime legislation and to earmark substantial funding to expand the country's law-enforcement agencies. Opposition parties in Congress already are criticizing Operation Safe Mexico as an illegal security initiative because army troops are stopping and searching vehicles at random -- without probable cause or legal search warrants.

Economic need represents a third reason why Mexico's crime-related security crisis will intensify. The economy's growth is slowing in 2005 as a result of slowing U.S. growth, higher U.S. interest rates, competition from China and a Mexican regulatory environment that discourages some foreign investment. Some Mexican economists estimate that fewer than 2 million Mexicans in a country with more than 100 million inhabitants earn more than $1,000 a month. Sluggish economic growth and high poverty rates assure a steady supply of new recruits into the Mexican drug-trafficking industry.

The cartel wars between Cardenas and his rivals from Sinaloa will continue until one side kills off the other side and absorbs its drug trafficking operations. This process could take another year or two before the body counts in Tamaulipas, Baja California and Sinaloa drop.

Making matters worse for Mexico, the nation also is in the early stages of a crack-cocaine epidemic that could last a decade, and could be more violent than the U.S. crack epidemic of the 1980s. Crack is powerfully addictive, and crimes such as armed robbery, assault, carjackings and murder will increase in many Mexican cities as the country's crack epidemic gains momentum.

I've been asked to prepare a risk/threat assessment for a visit to Mexico by a client. Not the capital or any of the major cities, just the tourist spots (Cancun,Xcaret, Tulum, Riviera regions, etc).I am working on the major details, but just wondered if anyone here had "hard" information/experiences regarding crime levels (both organised gangs and street attacks) as well as no-go areas at these destinations.

Also what is the status regarding personal weapons carry (knife, asp, etc) in Mexico - any ideas.

Any information would be greatly appreciated and a real big help. Thanks in advance.

A faction of the Mexican militant group Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) has claimed responsibility for the July 7 killing in Acapulco of Jose Ruben Robles Catalan, former secretary of Guerrero state. The faction, which appears to be a younger, more militant EPR offshoot, is out to make a name for itself.

Analysis

The Nation is First (LPEP) faction of Mexico's Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) took responsibility July 11 for the assassination of Jose Ruben Robles Catalan, a former Guerrero state secretary who was shot nine times outside an Acapulco hotel July 7. The group also said it would continue to target those it believes were responsible for the 1995 deaths of 17 farmers in the Guerrero town of Aguas Blancas. Former Gov. Ruben Figueroa, prosecutor Antonio Alcocer, police chief Gustavo Olea and Figueroa's political ally Hector Vicario Castrejon were specifically named as targets.

Founded in 1964, the EPR remained a low-level threat in Guerrero until the mid-1990s, when the Aguas Blancas massacre and other violence in Guerrero provoked expanded recruitment efforts by a new generation of EPR militants to bring more radical members into the fold. Since the EPR resurfaced, its main tactics have been sporadic drive-by shootings or grenades tossed at police stations, mostly around the Acapulco tourist area. One such incident occurred as recently as June 28, the 10th anniversary of the Aguas Blancas incident. The appearance of the LPEP faction and its new tactics nine days after such a lackluster anniversary attack suggests that not everyone in the EPR is content with the group's current status.

The EPR fissure most likely divides the old-guard leadership, whose members are now in their mid- to late-50s, and a generation of fighters in their 20s who joined during Mexico's political turmoil in the 1990s. The LPEP -- which takes its name from a quote by Vicente Guerrero, Mexico's second president and namesake of the state -- likely is controlled by the younger generation. This faction will seek to first increase the capabilities and notoriety of the EPR within Guerrero and other southern Mexican states such as Oaxaca and Chiapas in hopes of making the group a force across Mexico. The group also likely will try to raise its profile in Mexico state and the federal district surrounding Mexico City.

Should the EPR-LPEP manage to kill other targets, the Mexican army likely will crack down in Guerrero, and possibly Oaxaca and Chiapas. This could generate more political violence in Mexico's poor south and alienate other armed opposition groups throughout the area, such as the Zapatista National Liberation Army in Chiapas. Regional destabilization on that scale could indeed be an EPR objective.

The killing of Robles Catalan, however, does not indicate that the EPR is capable of significantly threatening Mexican security. Although there were reports in December 2004 that the EPR had been agitating Mexico City slum residents to participate in a larger, countrywide campaign of militancy, Stratfor has said, and continues to believe, that the EPR poses no credible threat to the capital. The increasing violence of the LPEP faction should warrant more precaution from foreign tourists, however, just in case the EPR-LPEP begins kidnapping people for political reasons.

If the LPEP is successful in assassinating another one of its targets, it could garner enough publicity to more effectively expand its operations, perhaps even to establish a base in Mexico City. Until then, however, the EPR and its factions will remain a localized threat within Guerrero, mainly to Figueroa and his old partners.==========

y, desde Diciembre

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The Real Threat of Violence in Mexico CityDecember 27, 2004 15 45 GMT

Summary

Mexico City's governor has discredited an intelligence report allegedly written by his public security chief that links a small militant group from Guerrero state to crimes in the capital. Although the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) militant group exists, and may be proselytizing politically in Mexico City's slums, the group does not have the urban tactical capabilities to engage in politically motivated violence. Mexico City residents and visitors face far greater threats from ordinary criminals and corrupt cops than from EPR militants.

Analysis

Mexican Federal District Gov. Manuel Lopez Obrador has denied a report in the Mexico City daily Reforma that says cells of the Popular Revolutionary Army (EPR) militant group are operating in Mexico City, saying there is "no evidence" of such activity. Separately, Public Security Secretary Joel Ortega denied that his office had written a 21-page report -- on which the Reforma article allegedly was based -- claiming that the EPR is actively recruiting and raising funds in Mexico City's poor slums, and has staged bank robberies and kidnappings in the capital. Federal District chief prosecutor Bernardo Batiz said "not a single crime" in Mexico City has been attributed to the EPR.

Lopez Obrador, Ortega and Batiz stopped short of claiming the Reforma report is false. Reforma managing editors said the newspaper stands by its Dec. 22 report. It is possible that the alleged report is, in fact, a real official document prepared in secret by the federal district's public security secretariat. However, its assertion that the EPR is involved in violent criminal activities in the state of Mexico and the federal district likely is inaccurate. EPR forces do not directly threaten residents and visitors in Mexico City. The real threat of violent crime comes from ordinary criminals, professional kidnappers and bank robbers that flourish thanks to the incapacity of an inefficient, undermanned, poorly commanded and frequently corrupt police force.

The alleged Public Security Secretariat document reportedly was prepared several days after two undercover police officers were beaten and burned to death in a poor Mexico City neighborhood by an angry mob that mistook the police officers for child kidnappers. The report makes no mention of this particular incident, although some news media had hinted that police officers in the area had the EPR under surveillance in the area at the time.

According to Reforma, the report states that the EPR's presence has been detected in eight Federal District municipalities and seven municipalities in the state of Mexico. The Federal District municipalities reportedly include Iztapalapa, Gustavo Madero, Xochimilco, Alvaro Obregon, Tlalpan, Magdalena Contreras, Cuajimalpa and also Tlahualc, where the two police officials were murdered Nov. 23. The Mexico state municipalities are Nezahualcoyotl, Ecatepec, Naucalpan, Tlalnepantla, Ixtapaluca, Chimalhuacan and Los Reyes.

The report also states that the EPR is raising funds by carrying out ransom kidnappings and bank robberies in the Federal District. However, Batiz emphatically dismissed any connection between the EPR and crimes such as kidnapping and bank robbery in Mexico City. These crimes, he said, involve "common criminals that start hijacking vehicles, assaulting people and then ascend to kidnapping. We have not found any link between these crimes and any armed guerrilla groups.

Lopez Obrador and his leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) are seen as leading contenders to win the presidency of Mexico in the 2006 national elections. President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN) and the opposition Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) have a strong interest in undermining Lopez Obrador's electoral prospects. Between now and the 2006 elections both the PAN and PRI repeatedly will seek to bring Lopez Obrador's political star down by linking him to corruption or portraying him as a weak leader. Confirming the EPR's active presence in the federal district could be pitched as a sign of weakness that renders Lopez Obrador unfit for the presidency. This may explain why Lopez Obrador led the charge to discredit and dismiss the alleged report prepared by his own public security chief.

The EPR is the military wing of the Democratic Popular Revolutionary Party (PDPR), a small regional militant organization based in the southern state of Guerrero. The EPR officially announced its existence in June 1996 in the community of Aguas Blancas in Guerrero, where it declared war against the country's ruling economic and political elites and called for an armed Marxist-Leninist revolution and the creation of a centrally planned socialist state. However, the EPR is not a new revolutionary movement in Mexico.

The EPR was originally founded in 1964 in Guerrero, during the early years of the Cuban Revolution. It initially emerged as an armed response by poor landless peasants against wealthy local landowners and politicians in Guerrero state. However, although the EPR has killed close to two dozen people since mid-1996 and has conducted small-scale attacks in several southern and central states against military and police outposts, public buildings and power stations, it has never threatened Mexican national security.

The EPR mainly is a very low-level threat in Guerrero state, where its armed actions have involved local landowners and political strongmen with ties to the opposition PRI, which ruled the country for seven decades until Fox became president in 2000. Its presence in such activities has been detected in at least eight states since 1996. This means it is possible that EPR activists are proselytizing politically in poor Mexico City slums. The group has been seeking for years to establish a political presence inside the country's capital region.

However, the EPR does not currently have the manpower, weaponry, organization and tactical capability to conduct offensive operations against targets in Mexico City. It is even less likely that EPR cells are engaged in bank robberies and ransom kidnappings in the country's capital. Federal and local law enforcement officials in the Mexico state and the federal district are certain that professional criminals -- not armed political militants -- perpetrate the frequent kidnappings and bank robberies in Mexico City. These officials point out that the EPR is a rural-based insurgency, not an urban militant group. Stratfor agrees.

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico (Reuters) - The United States is closing temporarily its consulate in this lawless Mexican border city after rival drug gangs clashed with bazookas, hand grenades and heavy machine-gun fire.

"A violent battle involving unusually advanced weaponry took place between armed criminal factions last night in Nuevo Laredo," U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza said on Friday.

He said he was ordering the consulate in Nuevo Laredo closed for all of next week and would only reopen it if the security situation improved.

"Repeated public statements by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico about the border situation in no way help bilateral efforts to end border crime," the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The latest battle erupted late on Thursday when about 30 masked gunmen opened fire on a suspected drug-cartel safe house in Nuevo Laredo, across the Rio Grande from Laredo, Texas, blasting off its doors and strafing the facade with bullets.

Police and witnesses said six men trapped in the house returned fire in a gun battle that raged for 20 minutes, littering the street with spent cartridges and sending neighbors diving for cover, although no one was killed.

"I grabbed my daughter tight ... and we hid under the bed until the explosions stopped," said one neighbor, who identified himself as Carlos.

Nuevo Laredo is a key trade hub but it is also gripped by warring drug cartels seeking control of lucrative cocaine, marijuana and amphetamine smuggling routes.

Dozens of people, including 18 police officers, have been murdered here this year in a war between well-armed gangs from western Sinaloa state and the local Gulf cartel.

The State Department has this year repeatedly warned American citizens not to travel to Nuevo Laredo, a city of 330,000 people that has long been notorious for drug crime and kidnappings.

Public order lurched to new lows in early June when gunmen shot and killed the city's new police chief just hours after he was sworn into office.

The government then sent troops and federal police to take over Nuevo Laredo, and the city's entire local police force was suspended for investigations into links with the drug barons.

Despite the heavy presence of army troops, more than 20 people have since been shot dead.

A renegade band of Mexican military deserters, offering $50,000 bounties for the assassination of U.S. law-enforcement officers, has expanded its base of operations into the United States to protect loads of cocaine and marijuana being brought into America by Mexican smugglers, authorities said. The deserters, known as the "Zetas," trained in the United States as an elite force of anti-drug commandos, but have since signed on as mercenaries for Mexican narcotics traffickers and have recruited an army of followers, many of whom are believed to be operating in Texas, Arizona, California and Florida. Working mainly for the Gulf Cartel, one of Mexico's most dangerous drug-trafficking organizations, as many as 200 Zeta members are thought to be involved, including former Mexican federal, state and local police. They are suspected in more than 90 deaths of rival gang members and others, including police officers, in the past two years in a violent drug war to control U.S. smuggling routes. The organization's hub, law-enforcement authorities said, is Nuevo Laredo, a border city of 300,000 across from Laredo, Texas. It is the most active port-of-entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, with more than 6,000 trucks crossing daily into Texas, carrying about 40 percent of Mexico's total exports. Authorities said the Zetas control the city despite efforts by Mexican President Vicente Fox to restore order. He sent hundreds of Mexican troops and federal agents to the city in March to set up highway checkpoints and conduct raids on suspected Zeta locations. Despite the presence of law enforcement, more than 100 killings have occurred in the city since Jan. 1, including that of former Police Chief Alejandro Dominguez, 52, gunned down June 8, just seven hours after he was sworn in. The city's new chief, Omar Pimentel, 37, escaped death during a drive-by shooting on his first day, although one of his bodyguards was killed. Authorities said the Zetas operate over a wide area of the U.S.-Mexico border and are suspected in at least three drug-related slayings in the Dallas area. They said as many as 10 Zeta members are operating inside Texas as Gulf Cartel assassins, seeking to protect nearly $10 million in daily drug transactions. In March, the Justice Department said the Zetas were involved "in multiple assaults and are believed to have hired criminal gangs" in the Dallas area for contract killings. The department said the organization was spreading from Texas to California and Florida and was establishing drug-trafficking routes it was willing to protect "at any cost." Just last month, the department issued a new warning to law-enforcement authorities in Arizona and California, urging them to be on the lookout for Zeta members. An intelligence bulletin said a search for new drug-smuggling routes in the two states by the organization could bring new violence to the areas. The number of assaults on U.S. Border Patrol agents along the 260 miles of U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona known as the Tucson sector has increased dramatically this year, including a May 30 shooting near Nogales, Ariz., in which two agents were seriously wounded during an ambush a mile north of the border. Their assailants were dressed in black commando-type clothing, used high-powered weapons and hand-held radios to point out the agents' location, and withdrew from the area using military-style cover and concealment tactics to escape back into Mexico. Santa Cruz County Sheriff Tony Estrada in Nogales said his investigators found commando clothing, food, water and other "sophisticated equipment" at the ambush site. Since Oct. 1, the start of the fiscal year, there have been 196 assaults on Border Patrol agents in the Tucson sector, including 24 shootings. During the same period last year, 92 assaults were reported, with five shootings. The sector is the busiest alien- and drug-trafficking corridor in the country. U.S. intelligence officials have described the Zetas as an expanding gang of mercenaries with intimate knowledge of Mexican drug-trafficking methods and routes. Strategic Forecasting Inc., a security consulting firm that often works with the State and Defense departments, said in a recent report the Zetas had maintained "connections to the Mexican law-enforcement establishment" to gain unfettered access throughout the southern border. Many of the Zeta leaders belonged to an elite anti-drug paratroop and intelligence battalion known as the Special Air Mobile Force Group, who deserted in 1991 and aligned themselves with drug traffickers.

Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of Mexico's Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), came out of hiding Aug. 6 to condemn left-wing presidential candidate Andres Lopez Obrador and his Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD). Marcos urged Mexico's left to join the EZLN in a new political alliance. Some PRD officials claim that Marcos has made secret alliances with PRD foes -- though Marcos' remarks more likely reflect an effort by Mexico's radical left to raise its public profile at the expense of what many Mexicans perceive as the moderate left.

Analysis

Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador expected until Aug. 6 to easily win his country's 2006 presidential election. On that date, however, Subcomandante Marcos, the leader of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN), appeared publicly in Chiapas for the first time since April 2001 to denounce Lopez Obrador and his left-wing Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), calling them "scoundrels and traitors."

Marcos also called for the Mexican left to choose whether to support the PRD or the "new" left-wing political movement consisting of strategic and electoral alliances with the EZLN. "If you are with (the PRD)," Marcos said, "then you are not with us." The Zapatista leader's condemnation of Lopez Obrador and the PRD stunned the candidate's supporters and senior party officials. Without the EZLN's explicit endorsement and the accompanying votes of millions of Mexicans who support the Zapatistas, Lopez Obrador's chances of winning the 2006 presidential election could decline significantly.

Some PRD leaders dismissed the "traitor" label because there has never been any tacit alliance between the PRD and EZLN. PRD officials said both political groups share some ideas about how to reform Mexico, but the PRD does not support armed struggle. Some PRD leaders also claimed -- without offering proof -- that the Zapatista leader's public condemnation of Lopez Obrador and the PRD resulted from a secret political alliance with unnamed groups that want to stop Lopez Obrador from becoming Mexico's next president. Assuming for the sake of discussion this is true, the question is: Who would seek an alliance with the EZLN to cripple Lopez Obrador's chances of being elected?

The ruling National Action Party (PAN) and some factions of the historically dominant Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) are obvious suspects. The PAN's political prospects in the 2006 elections are poor because many Mexican voters feel President Vicente Fox and the PAN have not achieved any of the economic and political reforms Fox promised during the 2000 election campaign. The pro-business, right-leaning PAN, then, could see an alliance with the EZLN as a way to thwart the PRD in the elections -- though this seems very far-fetched. For its part, the PRI has been a powerful force in Chiapas and other southern Mexican states for decades, while the EZLN also has emerged in the past decade as a group with apparent staying power in Chiapas.

As a result, a political accommodation between the EZLN and PRI is not completely out of the question. However, the PRI and EZLN are naturally mortal foes, so a PRI-EZLN alliance against Lopez Obrador would be difficult to sustain, and likely would become public news quickly in Mexico as members of both parties opposed to such an alliance leaked word of it to the media.

A third possibility is that PRD founder Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, who is closer ideologically than Lopez Obrador to figures such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, could be seeking to stop Lopez Obrador's election to the presidency, which would automatically diminish Cardenas' historical leadership of the PRD. Cardenas officially bowed out of the PRD presidential race in April because polls showed Lopez Obrador as the front-runner -- and Cardenas barely a blip.

The EZLN's leader's biggest motive for condemning Lopez Obrador and the PRD, however, probably is the EZLN's quest for survival as a viable political organization in Mexico. The EZLN has been hunkered down in Chiapas for more than a decade. Although it has substantial appeal among poor Mexicans, the EZLN -- whose members are called Zapatistas -- is not an active player in Mexican democratic politics, mainly because its leaders have chosen to exclude the EZLN from electoral politics. The problem with the EZLN strategy of self-exclusion is that it makes it much easier for the PAN, PRI and PRD to ignore the EZLN as a political competitor.

Marcos and his Zapatista colleagues apparently have finally realized that the longer they remain on the sidelines, the greater will be their exclusion from -- and irrelevance in -- Mexico's political process. The EZLN cannot compete successfully against the PAN and PRI. It does, however, have an opportunity to stake out a position to the left of Lopez Obrador and the PRD. The Zapatistas are doing this by condemning Lopez Obrador and the PRD's movement toward the political center. In effect, a radical socialist political movement is trying to raise its electoral profile by attacking the moderate left projected by Lopez Obrador and the PRD.

This could cost Lopez Obrador and the PRD Mexico's presidency next year, but it would position the EZLN to enter Mexican electoral politics successfully as a radical grassroots force that would replicate tactics used successfully by similar groups in Venezuela and Bolivia.

Mexican Security Minister Ram?n Mart?n Huerta and several other government officials died in a Sept. 21 helicopter crash that appears to have been caused by bad weather. The consequences of this apparent accident likely include a further deterioration of Mexico's security environment, reduced cooperation between U.S. and Mexican law enforcement on border issues, increased levels of capital flight and decreased foreign investment.

Analysis

Mexican Security Minister Ram?n Mart?n Huerta and five other government officials, including Federal Police Chief Tom?s Valencia Angeles, died in a helicopter crash 20 miles outside Mexico City on Sept. 21. Government officials said the helicopter, which was attempting to detour around inclement weather, crashed head-on into a wall of rock on a wooded hillside at an altitude of more than 11,000 feet. The helicopter's pilots also died in the crash. A pilot flying a second helicopter said he lost visual contact with Huerta's when it flew into a dense patch of clouds shortly before it crashed. Although an investigation is just beginning, bad weather is the most plausible explanation for the crash.

The helicopter was on its way to maximum-security La Palma prison 35 miles outside Mexico City. Huerta, Valencia and other officials were to inaugurate a new prison security force intended to improve security at the jail, which is notorious for its gang- and drug-related business and violence -- a state of affairs aided by the prison's heavily corrupted security personnel. Huerta was a close friend of President Vicente Fox, and his death, as well as Valencia's, will leave a vacuum in the government security apparatus. This, in turn, portends a decline in domestic security and in cooperation with the United States along the border -- as well as a slowdown in foreign investment and an increase in capital flight.

Fox appointed Huerta to the country's top security job in August 2004 with a mandate to tackle Mexico's exploding drug-trafficking problems in the face of a rapidly deteriorating domestic security situation. In his one year on the job, the drug trade's influence on local and regional governments increased -- as did violent crime. Huerta, however, was seen as someone with the potential to begin turning the ship around.

His death will not only bring an end to any new initiatives directed toward combating Mexico's drug traffickers and crime rates, but in combination with Valencia's death, will leave Mexico's security policies and main crime-fighting force rudderless. This will ease the work of Mexico's gangs and narcotics traffickers until replacements are found, meaning these groups are likely to take advantage of the vacuum to step up their activities in the near term. The result should be a further deterioration in domestic security.

Huerta and Valencia also played significant roles in cooperative efforts with U.S. law enforcement to improve security along the increasingly perilous U.S.-Mexican border. Without counterparts to work with, and eventually with the added complication of having to build new relationships with less-familiar officials, U.S. law enforcement will face a more daunting task, meaning security along the border is likely to decline as well in the near term.

Mexican politics will further complicate efforts to stabilize the country's security, as presidential elections due in July 2006 are fast approaching. Fox already is a lame duck, and with the campaign season under way the legislative and executive agendas will be limited as all parties focus on the elections. Huerta's replacement, therefore, likely will be unable to implement any new policies to substantially alter the security situation, meaning that any effective security policy unlikely can be put in place until the new administration takes office.

Expectations of worsening security will impact the Mexican economy as well. The central bank reported Sept. 20 that capital flight in the first half of 2005 stood at $10 billion, the highest figure for this period since 1980. Although the Mexican economy has an established history of hemorrhaging capital, this number is cause for concern. The leading reasons for the high figures are political uncertainty ahead of elections, the inability of the Fox government to push through needed reforms, and a higher risk environment caused by inadequate security. Huerta and Valencia's death will only compound these concerns and likely send more money abroad.

Foreign direct investment will likewise be affected by the more unstable security environment. Foreign investment has remained surprisingly strong in 2005 with an increase of 8.8 percent in the first half of the year to $7.4 billion compared to the same period in 2004, but this growth rate has been notably slower than in years past. This, again, is because of political uncertainty tied to the 2006 elections, the government's failure to further liberalize the economy and the business- and personal-security issues associated with rising crime in Mexico City and along the border. The fallout from the crash is likely to further slow foreign investment until after the elections.

Economic growth, expected to be 3 percent for 2005, is likely to come in below this figure. Expectations of 3.5 percent growth for 2006 also are likely to be negatively impacted by the deaths. This accident, then, will put many critical issues in Mexico on hold, thereby increasing the overall uncertainty in the country at least until after the presidential election.

PINO GORDO, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican Indians have grown maize, worshiped nature and lived by the light of pine torches in the canyons of the western Sierra Madre mountains for centuries. But this way of life is abruptly changing.

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Now armed drug gangs are forcing them to plant opium poppies and marijuana in their ancestral lands, which lie in a notorious region dubbed Mexico's 'Golden Triangle' of drug trafficking.

The rugged point where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa meet is home to around 90,000 Tarahumara, Tepehuan, Pima and Guarijio Indians, around half of whom are getting caught up -- only a few of them willingly -- in the spiraling trade, community leaders say.

The vulnerable groups live in log cabins or caves hewn from the rock of the plunging mile-deep canyons. Speaking in a consonant-rich dialect, they live by planting maize and beans and raising goats in a precarious hand-to-mouth existence.

Since the 1970s, tribal activists say at least 40 indigenous leaders have been gunned down by the chainsaw-wielding loggers and drug planters, in a conflict that is little known in the rest of Mexico.

The problem has recently become so bad that it is reaching even far-flung villages like Pino Gordo, a highly traditional Tarahumara Indian community watched over by peyote-chewing shamans, some 50 miles (80-km) from the nearest road.

"Outsiders are coming in and cutting down our oak and pine trees without our permission," the community's traditional leader Prudencio Ramos said in broken Spanish.

"They walk among us with guns and sow marijuana and poppies, and people are afraid," he added.

DRUGS, GUNS AND CHAINSAWS

While home to indigenous groups, the rugged tri-state area is also the cradle of the Mexican drug trade, where Chinese settlers first came in the 19th century to grow opium poppies for morphine-based painkillers sold in the United States.

Now, locals say traffickers are pushing ever deeper into the labyrinthian canyons of the Sierra, felling the old growth forests and planting illegal drug crops away from the vigilant gaze of the Mexican army, who set up road blocks in the area.

"The traffickers look for the most out-of-the-way places to plant marijuana and poppies ... and these are precisely the areas where the indigenous groups live," said Ramon Castellano, a local agricultural consultant of mixed Pima Indian descent.

They force some Stetson-wearing Indian farmers to plant marijuana and poppies at gun point. Others accept seeds, money and provisions from the traffickers in a bid to squeeze a few extra pesos from their marginal lands.

Toward harvest time in March and April, locals say burly cartel minders with assault rifles and two-way radios watch over the pockets of opium poppy blooms, which are transformed into increasingly pure "black tar" heroin and smuggled over the U.S. border.

"If it's a good year, the farmers can earn more than they can by planting maize," said Isidro Baldenegro, a Tarahumara activist who won a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize this year for his efforts to protect the forest communities.

"But if the army goes in, then they lose the crop and they don't even have the maize left to eat," he added.

Baldenegro, whose father was killed by an unknown gunman in 1986, has an armed police escort when he travels in the mountainous region after being harassed by powerful and well-connected drug loggers.

He was jailed on false charges of arms and drug possession in 2003, before being released 15 months later following pressure from international organizations including Amnesty International.

TRADITIONS UNDER THREAT

Mexican drug gangs are growing increasingly violent, and authorities say they have killed more than 1,000 people since the start of 2005 in a war for control of the lucrative trade in cocaine, marijuana, heroin and amphetamines worth billions of dollars in the United States.

The Sierra Madre Alliance, a nonprofit organization which supports threatened indigenous groups in the region, says the cartels' profits and networks of influence are forcing the Indians off their traditional lands.

The fall-out from the trade is also hitting tribal peoples' customs hard, filling traditional villages with guns, cash and consumer goods, while rates of drug and alcohol abuse there are starting to climb.

"There are now Tarahumara youngsters who smoke marijuana, which they never did before, and it's very common for them to get drunk when they have the money," said Baldenegro.

"They also buy loud radios and play music, which annoys people during the traditional festivals," he added.

The most important problem facing Mexico today is the inadequacy of its political system in serving the myriad needs of the Mexican people. From a U.S. perspective, it even occurs to me that the business and political leaders of your country should consider a grand political reorganization, not merely the kind of incremental reforms that are being debated.

The reason is that Mexico`s existing political mechanism evolved during its experiment with socialism, which requires a concentration of power at the elite center. Democratic capitalism functions best when political power is diffuse, widely shared by ordinary people. Luis Donaldo Colosio had embraced this view of political decentralization, as does Ernesto Zedillo and the candidates of the other major parties. This essay may help further the discussion by taking it to a broad, philosophical plain.

More than a century ago, Karl Marx correctly saw that for capitalism to thrive, political power must be dispersed through active universal suffrage. What he saw as the flaw of capitalism was that successful businessmen -- those at the top -- would always tend to use their political power to discourage competition from those at the bottom. Only a democracy that puts political power in the hands of the many can it act as a check on that tendency.

Mexico is now experiencing terrible social distress because the economic reforms of the Salinas Administration have taxed the existing political structure to the breaking point -- like a growing boy who is splitting through an old suit of clothes.

"Salinastroika," as I came to call it in 1989, has been a great boon to Mexico, benefitting the nation in general by reviving an economy that had stagnated under a burden of taxes, inflation, and public enterprises that squandered national resources. But the benefits thus far have been largely concentrated in the industrial and financial centers -- in Mexico City and Monterrey.

The answer is not to tax the centers more heavily in order to redistribute wealth to the less developed states -- Chiapas, for example. The answer lies in reorganizing the national political structure so that states, like Chiapas, will have the ability to increase their own economic welfare instead of relying on the good will of those at the center.

Giving up political power at the center sounds difficult to those who now have it, but it should rather be seen as an investment that will expand the power of all Mexicans -- in the same way a father gives up power over his growing sons. The people of Chiapas do not wish to drag down the people of Mexico City and Monterrey. They just do not want to be left behind.

At a meeting in Mexico City last November, for example, I recommended to some of Mexico`s leading businessmen that Mexico import one of the most successful of the institutions of the United States -- the practice of issuing state and municipal bonds that have been approved in elections by the people whose taxes must ultimately guarantee the bonds.

In the past several decades, Mexico`s national ruling class has maintained the allegiance of the people by gathering in resources at the center and, with a rough sort of justice, distributing those resources through the socialist mechanisms of the PRI.

President Salinas has taken this a step further, by distributing capital assembled at the center to public works projects given priority by the local citizenry. This at least draws on the intelligence of the people of the grass roots in discovering which uses of national capital will provide a reasonable return on investment.

In the United States, because political power is diffuse, the power to tax is diffuse as well. This enables even the smallest political subdivisions to draw upon public resources when all those affected democratically agree to shoulder the increased tax burden should the public investment fail.

There has been no better demonstration of the wisdom of ordinary people when democratically assembled than the public bond issues of the federal system in the United States. Over the last two hundred years, literally several hundred thousand bond issues have been floated by states, counties, cities, and towns as well as districts representing schools, airports, sewer and water systems. Rarely have such bonds failed, so careful are taxpayers and property owners in assessing the investments before they vote.

Democracy works so splendidly when voters can focus on a single issue because the electorate is like a giant computer, linking together the power of the small computers at the heart of the human brain. Individual voters may not be able to compete with the wisdom of the elite at the center, but when massed together in an integrated circuit, ordinary people can outperform any small number of experts on a single yes/no political decision.

The electoral reforms being discussed by leaders of the three main political parties in Mexico attempt to insure honest elections at the presidential and gubernatorial levels. The reforms are naturally resisted by local political operatives who see their way of life challenged by these reforms. From their perspective, Mexico City is taking away political power from the rest of the country in the name of political reform -- increasing power at the center.

The only way to neutralize their opposition is for the three national political parties to agree that some of the taxing power at the center should devolve to the perimeters -- along with the power to capitalize public resources through bond finance. In the United States, income from interest on state and local bonds are tax exempt, which is an efficient way of attracting capital from the wealth at the center to those locales deficient in capital. The system is perfectly suited to Mexico, which is already structured loosely along federal lines.

With this kind of power shift to the states comes responsibility. When people have an opportunity to acquire wealth, they develop a greater respect for property rights. As a result, communities that have honest elections do better than communities that do not. Instead of the national government attempting to police the voting booths, the people do it themselves out of self interest.

The current structure of government in Mexico is perfectly suited to the kind of corporate socialism that has served the people for better or worse. It is organized along the lines of a giant conglomerate called Mexico, Inc., with a chief executive officer who reports to a board of directors, who serves six years and, with the general approval of the board, is permitted to name his own successor.

The formula is superior to monarchy, which transmits power from one generation to another through blood and kinship. In the corporate method, anyone born in Mexico can theoretically grow up to be president. In some of the best days of the Roman Empire, emperors followed the practice of adopting sons deemed worthy of power. Over time, the system broke down through slippage in the selection process -- less able leaders chose less able successors.

The most efficient system is that which gives the whole people the power to select their leaders from the widest possible talent pool. The great religions of the world teach us that saviors can be found born in a stable or abandoned in the bulrushes. In establishing a new political system, the concept might again draw upon the experience of the United States.

It has only been in the last forty years that the American president has been chosen from candidates themselves chosen by the people at large. Prior to the 1950s, there were few primary elections. Democratic and Republican party leaders chose candidates through the convention process, which concentrated power in the hands of the party elite. In a new, decentralized political system, there would have to be some method that would give electoral weight to the considerations of those furthest from the center.

Yet another democratic concept that has served the United States well is that of the electoral college, which is suited to Mexico`s federal system. Its important ingredient is the winner-take-all aspect of state-by-state balloting. This maximizes the importance of small states, whose numbers would otherwise be swamped by the several megastates like California and New York.

It also forces the dominance of two political parties, as it is almost impossible for a major third party to survive a winner-take-all system. A two-party system is technically superior in advancing the national interest because it forces a clear choice in the agendas of the two parties. Multi-party systems introduce confusion in the electorate, leaving critical issues facing a nation unresolved.

If Mexico were to adopt a winner-take-all federal system, one of the three major parties would fade to minor status -- equivalent to the Libertarian or Socialist parties in the U.S. The other two would likely organize around the fundamental principles that have faced all people in all times -- one being the party of security, the other the party of opportunity.

In the smallest political unit, the family, the tension usually lies between the mother`s role of security, wishing to limit risk, and the father`s role of expanding opportunities through greater risk. The modern nation state may seem exceedingly complex next to the family unit, but in simplest terms, it operates best when it is organized the same way, as an aggregation of millions of family units.

If Mexico wished to carry these concepts to the state of the art, it might consider another democratic mechanism that is not now available to the people of the United States, but can be found in Switzerland. That is a national initiative and referendum process, which carries the concept of democracy to its logical conclusion.

In Switzerland each year, the most important issues facing the people are decided by the people in national referenda. Instead of assigning the most important policy questions to national legislatures, which can be considered "committees" of the whole people, the national electorate itself grapples with these five, six, or seven topics.

This mechanism makes Switzerland the most democratic country in the world. It should not be surprising that it is also the most prosperous, with the highest per capita income in the world. It is also a peaceful country, despite the fact that it accommodates four official languages of four distinct ethnic groups.

If Mexico had such a mechanism, it could put questions that now are impossible for it to address to the whole people. Should Pemex be privatized? If the people are asked this question in a public opinion poll, the answer comes back in the negative. In a national referendum on the subject, with voters having to educate themselves on the pros and cons, the results could be quite different. It could also lead to a question on whether citizens who own property should also own the mineral rights to that property -- restoring the law as it existed prior to the revolution.

The same is true of fundamental questions of monetary and fiscal policy, of social policies, and the environment. Instead of national political leaders having to guess at where the people wish to go, they can on the most important questions simply ask them. The ruling class at first glance will always be suspicious of this kind of expansive, active democracy -- believing it would diminish the importance of the elite. Instead, it would put a higher premium on the other elites of society, in business and finance, in the arts and sciences.

The global trend is in the direction of more, not less democracy, as communications become instantaneous, and as competition between nations requires the most efficient decision-making at the level of public policy. Instead of waiting for it to happen elsewhere, Mexico should now consider getting ahead of the curve, of taking this opportunity which history has presented it and discussing the frontiers of democratic possibilities. Instead of incremental reform, it should think of a constitutional convention and a grand reorganization that would put it first in the world at the edge of the new century.

Gunmen killed two police chiefs in northeastern Mexico within hours of one another Feb. 14; one in a wealthy suburb of Monterrey about 150 miles south of the Texas border and the other in the smaller city of Sabinas Hidalgo some 80 miles south of the border. Although still under investigation, the two killings indicate that violence at the hands of organized crime is spreading south from increasingly lawless Nuevo Laredo. Moreover, it seems just a matter of time before the drug lords move into the realm of corporate extortion -- if they have not already.

The first shooting took place in Sabinas Hidalgo after gunmen abducted Police Chief Javier Garcia as he arrived at city hall. Shortly after the abduction, police found Garcia's body on the side of a highway outside the city. Garcia, whose hands were handcuffed behind his back, had been shot in the back of the head. The second attack occurred four hours later in normally peaceful San Pedro Garza Garcia, the Monterrey suburb that is home to most of the city's rich and powerful, and many of the Americans and other foreigners who work in northern Mexico's industrial giant. In that attack, gunmen overtook Police Chief Hector Ayala's vehicle as it traveled in the city, and shot Ayala dead. Although it is unclear whether the two killings are directly linked, they appear to be the work of the drug cartels that operate in the region.

On the same day, heavily armed men entered the emergency room of a hospital in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, and gunned down a patient receiving treatment for a gunshot wound, bringing to 31 the number of people killed in the Mexican border town since the year began. In 2005, at least 181 people died violently in Nuevo Laredo, including 20 or more active and former police officers.

Monterrey, the capital of neighboring Nuevo Leon state and a pillar of the Mexican economy, is connected to the U.S. border by Highway 85 at Nuevo Laredo. On the U.S. side of the border, Highway 85 becomes Interstate 35, running from Laredo through San Antonio, Dallas and on through the central United States. Because of this, the Highway 85 corridor has long been a route for shipping goods -- and for smuggling drugs into the United States.

Monterrey has established itself as a major center for transnational corporate activity. High-tech companies such as Nextel and distribution-intensive companies such as Wal-Mart and the Texas-based supermarket chain HEB all have a presence in the city. Additionally, Mexican transnationals, including Bimbo, Jugomex and Mexican brewing giant Cervecer?a Cuauht?moc Moctezuma have centers of operations in Monterrey. Its geographic location makes it a major transportation hub in the supply chain from Mexican manufacturers to U.S. consumers.

U.S.-based businesses have long conducted operations in some of Mexico's most crime-ridden areas, and have found a way to come to terms with the security risks and the government and police corruption. The spreading violence -- especially to Monterrey -- could indicate increasing moxie on the part of the gangs, however. If they have not yet done so, the gangs could move beyond the realm of drug smuggling and into the world of corporate extortion. In many countries, shaking down corporate executives for protection money is a common practice, and there is little reason to believe such activity could not reach into Mexico. Moreover, in some cases -- Russia, for example -- these shakedowns can come from the host government as well.

It often is hard to tell the extent of underworld extortion of corporations, as more often than not the transnational corporation will opt to deal with the matter privately, rather than report it to the host government or the U.S. Embassy. Reporting a threat to U.S. officials in the country would have little effect, as the most they can do is report these threats back to the host government.

It remains to be seen whether criminal extortion of transnational corporations in Monterrey will become a significant problem. These latest killings do show that gang violence is moving beyond the border cities and into industrial zones. Mexican President Vicente Fox has gone on record as saying that gang violence and activity in the region will continue for the foreseeable future. The transition from drug smuggling to corporate extortion is inevitable, if not already present.

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The man favored to win Mexico's presidential election is often compared to the new breed of Latin American left-wing leaders but he prefers to delve deep into Mexican history to find his role models.

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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist front-runner for the July election, denies he is a populist in the mold of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and he rejects similarities to Bolivia's new leader, Evo Morales, or Brazil's more moderate president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Instead, Lopez Obrador is a keen admirer of Benito Juarez, a poor Zapotec Indian who became Mexico's first indigenous president and a modernizer in the mid-19th century.

At campaign rallies, amateur history buff Lopez Obrador lauds Mexico's independence heroes in the fight against Spain, and famous revolutionaries like Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

But he reserves most praise for the liberal Juarez, offering a glimpse into the kind of president he might try to be if he wins the July 2 vote.

"We are inspired by Benito Juarez's sobriety, austerity and the firmness of his republican principles," Lopez Obrador told a rally of up to 100,000 people in Mexico City on Sunday.

Lopez Obrador, the capital's former mayor, has topped opinion polls for the last three years, although his lead has faded a bit since campaigning began in January.

Wall Street investors and Washington policy-makers are anxious to know where he fits into Latin America's recent swing to the left. They worry Lopez Obrador will wreck Mexico's financial stability by spending heavily to create jobs, and that he might also take a firm anti-U.S. stance.

Lopez Obrador says he would take Juarez, who expanded civil rights and curbed Roman Catholic Church powers, as an example.

Juarez, a steel-willed man whose face adorns Mexico's 20-peso note, is a national icon for defeating French invaders, drawing up a federalist constitution and bringing a country torn by political and religious chaos under the rule of law.

TOUGH TASK

Lopez Obrador sees in himself a similar willingness to shake up Mexico, blighted by drug gang violence, mass emigration to the United States and grinding poverty, said left-wing historian Lorenzo Meyer.

"What is it that Andres Manuel sees in Juarez? He sees a political leader with a task that is almost impossible," said Meyer.

Lopez Obrador's reluctance to identify himself with other modern leftists might be an effort not to antagonize next-door neighbor the United States, Mexico's key trading partner.

"In their own ways, Lula, Chavez and Kirchner have conflicts with the United States," said Meyer. "Anything Lopez Obrador might say on foreign policy could turn into a problem for him."

But aides say Lopez Obrador, a widower and former Indian rights activist, is driven by a need to leave his own mark on history, in his case by raising millions of Mexicans out of poverty and fighting corruption.

"It is not just about putting the presidential sash on and sitting in the presidential seat," Lopez Obrador said on Sunday. "It's about a real renovation, a true purification of public life."

Lopez Obrador will make history of his own if he wins the election. No candidate from a left-wing party has ever become president in Mexico.

Lopez Obrador called former President Lazaro Cardenas the best Mexican president of last century on Sunday. Cardenas is remembered for nationalizing the oil industry in 1938 and the reference underlined Lopez Obrador's commitment to keep private investment away from state oil monopoly Pemex.

Lopez Obrador speaks little about foreign policy and other regional leaders, which is no loss for some Mexicans.

"We don't know much about them," said florist Estela Ramos, a Lopez Obrador backer. "We have enough problems in Mexico."

Until the recent Dubai Ports World uproar, you have been vociferous in covering the story of illegal immigration. While I agree with you the borders ought to be made more secure, I`ve come to believe you are spinning your wheels with the way you have pursued the issue.

One way to end the problem of illegal immigration is, of course, the way you have espoused: tougher border controls, tougher penalties for illegals caught in the U.S., and no amnesty for anybody. Nothing intrinsically wrong with any of those ideas, except that they are expensive and don`t work so well, as we`ve seen. The other way, which you have ignored, is for the Mexican government to make the country`s capital tax structure so attractive to its people that not only do they not want to leave, those who have left will return.

I came across an essay Jude wrote to President Vicente Fox that outlines a way in which this might be accomplished. Of course, some of the tax rates have changed: in 2005, the top marginal rate was lowered to 30 percent; unfortunately, the threshold was lowered as well, and kicks in around US$8,500. Even oil revenues can`t offset the tremendous burden. The tax structure is almost as heavy a millstone as it is in Africa: it`s no wonder Mexicans flee the country in droves for a life here. Solving the problem in Mexico would provide a template for other Latin American countries to follow, alleviating the burden of illegal immigration for the U.S. overall. Perhaps a journalist of your stature bringing the idea to light might encourage the government to consider some of these changes.

Anyway, having doggedly reported on the story for the last several years, I thought you might enjoy a fresh perspective. Here it is, with our compliments.

Having had such high hopes for your tenure when you were elected in 1999, Mr. President, I am sorely dismayed that your economy remains in such sad shape that you have to negotiate with our President to send your unemployed to work here illegally. Nothing I saw in your meeting with President Bush indicates you are getting any closer to figuring out that as long as your tax system is so out of line with the US tax system, you will continue to export your people into the American Southwest and California. They are not leaving in search of lower tax rates, mind you. It is just that Mexico?s business class cannot form the capital necessary to sustain broader employment of your people at living wages.

As far as I can tell, your top income tax rate of 33% now applies at an income of about $20,000. In the U.S., the top rate is 38.6%, but that is not encountered until taxable income reaches $312,000. Your 25% rate is reached at $7230 and the closest U.S. tax bracket for a head of household of 27% is reached at $98,000. Your 10% rate is reached at $4114. The U.S. 10% rate is encountered at $10,000. Do you see what I mean?

Then there is your 15% Value Added Tax, which adds to the burdens of enterprise, a tax that the United States does not have at all.

If you check with your finance minister, Francisco Gil Diaz, he will tell you that I have been pestering him for the last four years to cut or eliminate your capital gains tax. There is a zero capital gains tax on shares traded on your stock exchange, I know, but you have to be a big company to trade on the Bolsa. If you are not big enough to be admitted to the Bolsa, you must pay capital gains at the ordinary rates. In other words, the system favors the elites and punishes the pool out of which you would expect to find entrepreneurs who someday might become big enough to compete with the elites. If you would eliminate the capgains tax, which I?m sure you will find brings in very little revenue to your government. This is because it encourages businesses to remain small or to find ways to avoid the tax. You would immediately find the Mexico stock market surging ahead, not because the elites would get a more favorable treatment than zero, but because the economy underneath them would be pushing up the value of all assets. Revenues would then increase dramatically on your income tax and your VAT tax, and you could then easily make provision to lower the burden of the VAT and income tax. I?d recommend you leave the top rate in place at 33% and increase the threshold to at least $100,000.

There are a great many other things you can do to catch up with the United States in the way you originally envisioned, President Fox. But this would be a good start. What you would find, even if you presented such a program to the legislature, that there would immediately be a hesitation of your citizens to leave the U.S., and in a short time there would be a reflow of Mexican nationals who are now struggling to make ends meet in California and the other Southwestern states.

Monetary policy is also something to consider, although here Minister gil Diaz has done a better job in stabilizing the value of the peso. You are always at risk, though, because of the floating U.S. dollar. Here is a memo I wrote to Paco Gil on July 23, 2001, ?Those Unhappy Mexican Farmers.? It was written when your economy was suffering terribly from the monetary deflation caused by the Federal Reserve?s management of the floating dollar.

Thugs, Drugs and Coyotes on the U.S.-Mexican BorderIn response to testimony that violence along the U.S.-Mexican border is at an all-time high -- and getting worse -- the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to recommend that the United States increase the number of Border Patrol agents on the job from Texas to California. Even if Congress were to approve the biggest and fastest increase discussed -- as many as 12,000 more agents over two years -- the move is unlikely to stem the wave of humanity and associated violence surging into the United States.

U.S. Border Patrol Chief David Aguilar told the committee that assaults on his agents increased 108 percent between 2004 and 2005, mainly because drug smugglers and "coyotes," those who help illegal immigrants enter the United States for a fee, are more willing than ever to fight agents when confronted, rather than run. The increase in assaults indicates not only that the stakes are getting higher in the smuggling business on both sides of the border, but that a new, more violent group of coyotes is vying for control of the human-smuggling operations in northern Mexico: Central American street gangs known as Mara Salvatruchas, or MS-13.

Meanwhile, violence is raging along the Mexican border -- and in other parts of Mexico -- between rival drug cartels that are competing for control of drug-smuggling operations into the United States as well as for control of the overall illegal drug market within Mexico. In 2005, Mexican President Vicente Fox sent the army to increasingly lawless Nuevo Laredo after two of the last three local police chiefs died at the hands of the cartels, which have started using heavy weapons to fight their wars. Across the Rio Grande in Laredo, Texas, crime rates increased as the fighting spilled over from Mexico. In Arizona, which includes the porous Tucson border sector, meanwhile, federal prosecutors handled 32 cases of kidnapping involving cartel members in 2005, compared to only two cases in 2001.

Although the insecurity along the border has increased concerns in the United States that jihadists and other militants will attempt to enter from Mexico, violence associated with the cartels, the gangs and the coyotes likely will remain the biggest threat. Terrorist infiltration across the Mexican border is possible, but risky. Rather than risk sending a valuable attack team through the violent and unstable border area, jihadists determined to commit terrorist acts in the United States are more likely to enter the country through international airports on valid passports, as did every one of the Sept. 11 hijackers.

Even if Congress were to approve nearly doubling the size of the Border Patrol from its current 11,300 agents, the agency still would be vastly outnumbered. According to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. agents apprehended 1.1 million people along the border in 2005, although the Border Patrol's catch-and-release policy can force agents to apprehend the same person over and over. Of the total apprehensions, 139,000 of them were criminals, including many from MS-13 and other gangs. For example, of the 2,388 gang members arrested in Operation Community Shield, a two-week law enforcement round-up of illegal immigrants that began Feb. 24, 922 belonged to MS-13 gangs. The criminal element coming over the border has spread throughout the United States, to cities such as Dallas, San Diego, Washington, Miami and Raleigh, N.C. An estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants succeed in making it across the border each year.

Although the vast majority of illegal immigrants continue to be Mexicans and Central Americans lured to the United States by the hope of finding jobs, the new reality on the border, and beyond, is an ever-stronger criminal presence. Congressional debate on immigration reform, which could begin as soon as March 27, will address this new reality -- though fixing the problem will be close to impossible.

Mexican President Vicente Fox recently said a new oil field has been discovered off the coast of southern Veracruz in the Gulf of Mexico. The field, which could hold reserves of up to 10 billion barrels of crude, would significantly increase Mexico's total oil reserves, which currently stand at 46.4 billion barrels. However oil production at this site will take several years for technical reasons alone, not to mention the current legal and financial restrictions that Petroleos Mexicanos faces in developing this and other fields.

Analysis

Mexican President Vicente Fox on March 14 officially announced the discovery of a new offshore oil field in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The "Deep Coatzacoalcos" oil field, located around 60 miles from the coast of southern Veracruz, could hold 10 billion barrels of crude, which amounts to more than 20 percent of Mexico's current total reserves of 46.4 billion barrels.

This discovery is important in the context of declining proven reserves. Mexico's main oil field, Cantarell, which is located off the coast of Campeche and accounts for nearly 75 percent of the country's daily production of 3.4 million barrels, has reached its production peak this year. Mexico has started developing other fields, but none of them is large enough to substitute for Cantarell. If the reserves in the Deep Coatzacoalcos field turn out to be as large as announced, Mexico could continue being a relatively important player in the oil market (it is currently the fifth-largest producer and ninth-largest exporter) and secure a stable domestic supply for years. However, it will be several years before production begins because of technical, financial and legal restrictions.

Mexico, which once based most of its exports on oil, has been able to transform and diversify its economy in the past two decades. However, the Mexican government continues to depend heavily on oil revenues to finance public expenditures; more than a third of the government's total revenues come from oil. By taking most of the profits away from state oil monopoly Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex), the government has left Pemex in a state of chronic underinvestment. This has hampered Pemex's ability to explore for new fields, exploit current fields and process and refine the extracted crude.

The Mexican government also has not used oil revenues to finance a tax reform that would help the government rely less on oil profits over the long run. Moreover, Mexico has not taken advantage of the high oil prices during the past couple of years, since it has been unable to increase production. And when Mexico finally starts producing in the currently underdeveloped oil fields, the high prices might not be there anymore.

Pemex officials admit it will take at least eight years to start producing from the Deep Coatzacoalcos field. With the most modern technology, it would take at least five years to be able to start any kind of production using deep-sea deposits such as those in the new field -- and that is without the financial constraints Pemex faces. Currently, production costs are around $4 per barrel at Cantarell and $5 per barrel at the Ku Maloop Zaap field, which is next in line for exploitation. Pemex estimates that production costs on the new deep-sea fields could reach between $11 and $12 per barrel -- before taxes charged by the Mexican government, which in 2005 equaled around 60 percent of the total sales. Additionally, Pemex faces a total debt of $50 billion. This puts significant financial limitations on the exploitation of Deep Coatzacoalcos.

Mexico not only faces technical problems -- it is clear that Pemex does not have the latest technology to minimize development time -- and high production costs, but the government also restricts private and foreign investment, which could be the only way to sensibly exploit its oil deposits. The Mexican Constitution prohibits foreign and private investment, so the government has been forced to resort to limited subcontracting and even joint investments to build refining plants outside the country. This, along with the aforementioned financial and technical restrictions, could mean that Mexico will see its role as a leading oil exporter diminish while the country faces internal bottlenecks that affect its economic competitiveness.

All the candidates running in Mexico's presidential election, which will be held July 2, have named energy as one of their main concerns. Felipe Calderon, from Fox's National Action Party, and Roberto Madrazo, from the previously long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, favor changing the law to allow private investment in exploration. However, the current front-runner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, has made maintaining the current restrictions one of his campaign tenets. Lopez Obrador has promised heavy investments into Pemex's modernization, but it is not clear how he would get the money without private investment.

Fox's administration decided to concentrate most of Pemex's scarce investment resources into oil exploration. During the past five years, Pemex has invested more than an estimated $6 billion in finding reserves. The discovery of Deep Coatzacoalcos makes it look like some of that investment will pay off. However, while the discovery of the new oil reserves is good news for Mexico, it will not affect global markets in the short or medium term. Moreover, the economic significance of these reserves for the country could be very low if Mexico arrives late again by refusing to change the status quo so it can develop and take advantage of its oil riches. The discovery of the new reserves is a good opportunity to rethink Mexico's long-term oil strategy.

Mexican Military Incursions into U.S. TerritoryThe current debate in the United States over illegal immigration focuses on the flood of average Mexican and Central Americans who are crossing into the United States to find jobs. An under-reported problem along the U.S.-Mexican border, however, involves incursions by Mexican military personnel into U.S. territory. In some cases, shots have been fired and U.S. citizens threatened. It appears that no government agency on either side of the border has a handle on the motives for these incursions.

According to the Department of Homeland Security, suspected Mexican military units have crossed into the United States 216 times since 1996: 75 times in California, 63 in Arizona and 78 in Texas. U.S. patrols that do encounter Mexican military personnel (or anyone in uniform), however, are under strict orders not to fire, so as to avoid inciting a gunbattle -- and a possible international border incident. Lacking sufficient manpower and resources to patrol the entire border, groups such as the Border Sheriff's Association and Texas Border Sheriffs Coalition have frequently appealed to lawmakers for help.

Some of these incursions could be accidental -- the result of Mexican authorities chasing drug runners or human smugglers into U.S. territory. During a pursuit, the Mexicans could easily lose track of where they are going and wander too far north. In some parts of the border, the demarcation line between countries is extremely hard to distinguish, even for seasoned professionals. And during dry seasons in the Texas region of the border, the Rio Grande can become nothing more than a trickle, making it appear little more than a ditch. It is unlikely that all Mexican military patrols along the border operate with global positioning systems (GPS), so the occasional navigational mistake should not be surprising. In fact, stand-offs have occurred between Mexican military troops and U.S. Border Patrol agents, each one believing the other encroached on their side of the border.

Not all of these crossing could be innocent, however. Mexican military troops could be running drugs over the border themselves or providing logistics and protection for cartels. The Sheriff's Office in Hudspeth County, Texas, reported Jan. 23 that men dressed as members of the Mexican military provided cover for drug runners near the Rio Grande. And, on March 2, Hudspeth County Sheriff's deputies apprehended a Mexican customs officer with detailed maps of the area and a GPS tracking system in his vehicle. The officer was believed to have been performing reconnaissance for drug smuggling routes. This latest case only highlights the relative ease in which Mexican officials can cross into the United States.

It should be noted, however, that in smuggling operations, corrupt Mexican officials and soldiers more than likely have contacts on the U.S. side of the border, possibly in law enforcement agencies.

Paramilitary units along the Mexican border could also be partly responsible. Groups such as the Zetas, highly trained ex-military personnel who have formed a muscle-for-hire organization, have a working relationship with the cartels. These hired guns control large expanses of the Mexican border with enough firepower and training to challenge the Mexican military as well as U.S. Border Patrols. Dressed in combat fatigues, carrying military weapons and driving military-style vehicles, Zetas would be indistinguishable from active-duty soldiers. It also is possible that the Zetas have recruited moonlighting active-duty soldiers along with their equipment and vehicles, further adding to the confusion.

U.S. law enforcement along the border face the constant threat of confronting armed smugglers and drug traffickers. In some cases, they also must deal with U.S. citizens who have formed private vigilante groups, such as the Minutemen. The incursions by Mexican military personnel only add to the chaos. Send questions

In a City of Killings, Silence Is GoldenNuevo Laredo, Mexico, is a battleground in a drug cartel turf war. But talking about the crimes can be deadly, especially for journalists.By H?ctor Tobar, Times Staff WriterApril 23, 2006

NUEVO LAREDO, Mexico ? Here, it's better not to know.

Information can be poison in this border city. Hard-boiled police reporters would rather you didn't tell them the names of certain criminals. When there's a shootout downtown, even the most ambitious radio reporter will not necessarily rush to the scene.

ADVERTISEMENT So it went the day last month that four undercover federal police officers were ambushed and killed in thick lunch-hour traffic on the city's busiest street. The offices of several newspapers and radio stations were just blocks away ? but the news broke 700 miles to the south, on the Mexico City wire services.

"I don't mention groups, I don't mention names?. I don't want to know anything," said a newspaper editor here and member of the Assn. of Journalists of Nuevo Laredo. His paper will publish only the barest facts of the crime wave sweeping the city.

"It's not fear, it's being prudent," he explained. Three journalists have been killed here in the last year. "We're not going to try to be the hero of the movie."

The war between the so-called Gulf and Sinaloa drug cartels has been blamed by Mexican federal officials for more than 230 killings in the city in the last 16 months. The journalists who ordinarily would report on such violence have been silenced by cartel operatives who kidnap reporters and repeatedly phone in threats to newsrooms.

Violence and intimidation have created a culture of silence in this city of 500,000 people. Municipal officials rarely comment publicly on the killings. Law enforcement authorities seem powerless. And people here are hard-pressed to remember the last time anyone was arrested or prosecuted for such sensational crimes as the killing of more than a dozen police officers.

"When a crime is committed there should be an investigation, an accused, a punishment," says Carlos Galvan, the owner of two newspapers here. "As long as those things don't happen, speculation eats up [the reputation of] the victim."

Indeed, rumor and mythology are filling the information vacuum in Nuevo Laredo.

Ask why so many people have died here, and there's a good chance you'll be told that the dead have only themselves to blame. The vox populi has it that no "good" or "innocent" person is ever killed in Nuevo Laredo.

"They must have been involved in something," a taxi driver said just a block from the site where the four police officers were killed.

The refrain is reminiscent of dictatorships in other Latin American nations, such as Argentina, where for years people were taken away by soldiers and police officers and "disappeared" without explanation.

Told that the dead were police officers, the taxi driver responded, "The police are all corrupt."

Another popular saying here draws on the Mexican myth that killers are fated to forever drag around the remains of their victims: "Only the person who carries the sack of bones knows why they were killed," people say.

Newspaper and radio reporters here say they would like to tell the full story of the killings. The names of certain drug kingpins circulate among journalists and in other border towns, but have never been printed. Facts might help dispel the myths, they say, as well as the aura of omnipotence that surrounds the cartels. But facts can get reporters killed.

"Some fortunate people who have not been touched directly by the violence can give themselves the luxury of thinking that honest people are not affected," said one journalist who, like many other people interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of not being named. "That's not true."

The cartels are a shadowy but ubiquitous presence. Longtime residents fear their wealth, their armaments and their apparent infiltration of institutions, such as the police force.

"Here, everyone knows who is a narco and who works for them," said one Nuevo Laredo resident, a university student.

"The important thing is not to get mixed up with them and keep a normal life. I even know some narco juniors," the student said, using a term for the young assassins from well-off families recruited to the cartels. "They're very obvious. They show up with the armored pick-up trucks, with guards and all that."

More than 60 people have been killed in the city this year.

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The pictures of the dead run in the local newspapers alongside screaming headlines such as "A Rain of Bullets!" Some papers routinely run stark pictures of open-eyed corpses torn up by high-caliber bullets. But rarely will a local newspaper, or a local official, explain why a person was killed or who the killer might be.

Are all the dead drug dealers, or connected with them, as many say?

ADVERTISEMENT When a police officer is killed, is it in retaliation for a police raid, or because the officer was mixed up with criminals?

When a journalist is killed or attacked, is it because he or she "offended the sensibilities" (a common Nuevo Laredo euphemism) of one of the drug bands by revealing something about its operations? Or was it because the journalist was working for a cartel and was killed by its rival?

Last year, Tamaulipas Gov. Eugenio Hernandez Flores told residents: "The people of Tamaulipas who behave themselves have nothing to fear" because those being victimized in the wave of violence "are in some way involved with organized crime."

Even people who were close to the victims wonder whether they can ever know why their friends and relatives were killed.

A Nuevo Laredo resident who described himself as a childhood friend of Alejandro Dominguez, a police chief assassinated last year, wonders out loud what his friend might have done to get himself killed.

"You have to go to the root of things. Why did it happen?" says the man, a Nuevo Laredo entrepreneur who asked not to be named. "What did he have in his past? What was his way of living before?"

Dominguez had worked in the attorney general's office.

"He was in law enforcement," the friend said. "And when you're in that job, whether you like it or not, you have to get involved with bad people."

The assassination of Dominguez shook Nuevo Laredo and garnered international headlines. He had been head of the Nuevo Laredo police force for just a few hours when he was gunned down.

"It hits you hard. You know that person, you are with that person, you listen to his dreams and aspirations," the friend said. Still, like many residents here, he was concerned that the killing had been blown out of proportion. He seemed to be angry with his old friend for getting assassinated in such a scandalous way.

"If he hadn't been killed in an hour, it wouldn't have had such an impact on Nuevo Laredo," he said.

Key facts about the drug war are unknown to the general public. For example, it's never been reported here that criminal gangs have threatened local radio stations and newspaper reporters to keep them from reporting on shootings.

Nor has it been reported locally that the narcos have kidnapped journalists. And one Nuevo Laredo reporter told the Mexico City magazine Proceso in February that none who have been kidnapped ? and sometimes tortured ? by the drug bands will file an official complaint.

"Because if there's anyone here who knows that the federal, the state and especially the municipal authorities cannot be trusted, it's precisely us," the journalist said.

The mayor of Nuevo Laredo rejected requests for an interview for this article, as did police officials.

To escape the pervasive sense of danger, many residents, including some journalists, seek out facts that suggest that violence is something that happens to others.

At radio station 95.7 FM, news director Marco Antonio Espinoza disagrees with those who say his colleague Ramiro Tellez was killed because he was a journalist.

"The problem did not occur because of journalism," Espinoza said. Tellez really wasn't a journalist, Espinoza said. "He'd come in here in the morning and do the weather report. Then he would leave."

Tellez, who was killed March 10, worked as director of the city's emergency and police communications system. Sources speculated that Tellez may have been killed because the city had recently installed a communications system that made it difficult for criminals to monitor police radio transmissions.

"We stay away from police stories," Espinoza said. "It was the other job that caused his problem."

The newspaper El Ma?ana decided to "self-censor" its coverage after editor Roberto Mora Garcia was slain outside his home in 2004. Nevertheless, on Feb. 6, the newspaper's offices were attacked and a reporter seriously wounded by men wielding assault rifles and hand grenades.

Sources in Nuevo Laredo's journalism community offered several theories about the reason. Maybe it was because of the Proceso article that had come out a day earlier. Maybe it was because El Ma?ana had recently participated in a journalism symposium with out-of-towners. Or maybe it was because of a certain story that mentioned the sighting of a cartel hit man.

"Who was responsible?" El Ma?ana asked in an editorial after the February attack. "We don't know. It could have been anybody. They are ghosts.

"Many times we in the media are attacked in order to blame a rival group, so that a crackdown by the authorities on that rival group will follow.

"It's the new method of doing terrorism."

*Carlos Mart?nez of The Times' Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.

===========MEXICO CITY (AP) -- Mexican President Vicente Fox refused to sign a drug decriminalization bill Wednesday, hours after U.S. officials warned the plan could encourage "drug tourism."Fox sent the measure back to Congress for changes, but his office did not mention the U.S. criticism.Fox will ask "Congress to make the needed corrections to make it absolutely clear in our country, the possession of drugs and their consumption are, and will continue to be, a criminal offense," according to a statement from the president's office.

On Tuesday, Fox's spokesman had called the bill "an advance" and pledged the president would sign it. But the measure, passed Friday by Congress, drew a storm of criticism because it eliminates criminal penalties possession of small amounts of heroin, methamphetamines and PCP, as well as marijuana and cocaine.

Earlier in the day, the U.S. government expressed a rare public objection to an internal Mexican political development, saying anyone caught with illegal drugs in Mexico should be prosecuted or given mandatory drug treatment."U.S. officials ... urged Mexican representatives to review the legislation urgently, to avoid the perception that drug use would be tolerated in Mexico, and to prevent drug tourism," U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Judith Bryan said.There are concerns the measure could increase drug use by border visitors and U.S. students who flock to Mexico on vacation.

Bryan said the U.S. government wants Mexico "to ensure that all persons found in possession of any quantity of illegal drugs be prosecuted or be sent into mandatory drug treatment programs."Jerry Saunders, mayor of San Diego - just a short drive from the border town of Tijuana, Mexico - applauded Fox's decision, saying he was "appalled" by the bill because it could increase drug availability north of the border."We have been a partner with Mexico in fighting against illegal drugs, and this will only help in the long-term in that relationship," he said.The legislature has adjourned for the summer, and when it comes back, it will have an entirely new lower house and one-third new Senate members following the July 2 elections, which will also make the outgoing Fox a lame duck.

However, Sen. Jorge Zermeno, of Fox's conservative National Action Party - a supporter of the bill - said he thought Congress would be open to changing the legislation to delete a clause that extends to all "consumers" the exemption from prosecution that was originally meant to cover only recognized drug addicts."The word 'consumer' can be eliminated so that the only exemption clause would be for drug addicts," Zermeno told The Associated Press. "There's still time to get this through."The bill contained many points that experts said were positive: it empowered state and local police - not just federal officers - to go after drug dealers, stiffened some penalties and closed loopholes that dealers had long used to escape prosecution.But the broad decriminalization clause was what soured many - both in Mexico and abroad - to the proposal.

Mexico's top police official, Eduardo Medina Mora, acknowledged on Tuesday that the U.S. anti-drug agency has expressed concern about the law. Some senators and community leaders in Mexico also objected to the bill. But even if it had passed, he noted that Mexican cities have the power to impose fines and overnight jail detentions for those caught with drugs in public.Current Mexican law allows judges latitude to drop charges if suspects can prove they are addicts and the quantity they were caught with is small enough to be considered "for personal use," or if they are first-time offenders.The new bill would have made the decriminalization automatic, allowed "consumers" as well as addicts to have drugs, and delineated specific allowable quantities, which do not appear in the current law.Under the law, consumers could have legally possessed up to 25 milligrams of heroin, a half a gram of cocaine and about one-fifth of an ounce of marijuana.__________________

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May 4, 1:21 AM EDTMexican Protesters, Police Clash; 1 Dead By EDUARDO VERDUGO Associated Press WriterSAN SALVADOR ATENCO, Mexico (AP) -- One person was killed as machete-wielding protesters near Mexico's capital clashed with police Wednesday, blocking highways, throwing molotov cocktails and briefly seizing six officers.A 14-year-old boy from San Salvador Atenco was killed, though circumstances surrounding his death were unclear, said Humberto Benitez, secretary general of the state of Mexico.Benitez said, as did a spokesman for the Federal Preventative Police, that a federal police agent was also beaten to death. Hours later, however, Mexico state Gov. Enrique Pena Nieto called television stations to say the officer remained hospitalized in serious condition.

Television images from helicopters overhead showed residents repeatedly punching and kicking the semiconscious officer even after he had been put inside an ambulance.

The residents, who have a history of fights with authorities, attacked police after several of their companions were arrested in the nearby town of Texcoco, according to media reports.Hundreds of police fired tear gas into the crowds and arrested 31 people. A tense calm settled over the town after dark, though residents continued to block nearby highways.

Shortly before midnight, community leaders released six state and federal police officers they had taken hostage hours earlier. Officials said it was a gesture of good will since all of the officers were injured in the clashes.At least three dozen police officers were injured, according to media reports. An Associated Press photographer suffered minor bruises after being clubbed during the melee.

Elsewhere in Mexico, gunmen opened fire on a group of officers eating lunch in a restaurant in the troubled border town of Nuevo Laredo, injuring five officers and a bystander.Three officers were in serious but stable condition after the attack while two others suffered minor injuries, said Rene Ruiz, an investigating agent.No arrests were made and investigators said they didn't know why the officers were attacked or how many assailants were involved.Nuevo Laredo, a city of 330,000 across from Laredo, Texas, has been caught in a turf war between rival drug gangs fighting for billion-dollar smuggling routes into the United States. Since Jan. 1, about 100 people, including eight police officers, have been slain in the city, compared to 23 during the same period last year.

Beheadings in Mexico: The Foreign Element in Mexico's Drug WarsOn May 8, authorities in the town of Aguaje in Mexico's Michoacan state found the beheaded body of Hector Espinoza, a lawyer whose client had been detained by authorities on suspicion of belonging to a drug cartel. The gruesome discovery came nearly three weeks after two police officers were beheaded in the resort city of Acapulco. Although beheadings bring jihadist groups to mind, these more likely were perpetrated by criminals or militants from elsewhere in Latin America.

Espinoza was defending Armando Sanchez Arreguin, an alleged member of an independent drug cartel led by Juan Far?as, also known as "the Grandfather." Arreguin was captured after being wounded in a shootout with the rival Millennium cartel. His lawyer's severed head was hung from an archway that serves as one of the entrances to Aguaje. A homemade "welcome" sign was affixed nearby.

On April 20, the heads of two police officers were left in front of a government building in Acapulco's La Garita neighborhood, mere blocks from the resort town's tourist strip. A red cardboard sign that read, "So you learn some respect," was taped on the wall nearby. The officers' bodies were found miles away, wrapped in plastic sheeting and duct tape. The killings appear to be revenge for the officers' part in a gunfight some months earlier between police and suspected gang members, in which four suspects were killed. One of the officers was subsequently seen in a video aired on Mexican television, which shows him killing a gang member execution-style during the shootout.

Killings of police officers, judges and other officials have become widespread in Mexico, as rival drug cartels battle over turf. The two main combatants are the Gulf cartel, allegedly run from prison by Osiel Cardenas since his arrest in 2003, and the Sinaloa cartel, run by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, who escaped from prison in 2001. The Gulf cartel has used a group of former Mexican airborne troops known as "Los Zetas" in its war against the Sinaloa cartel. These well-organized and heavily armed enforcers have a well-deserved reputation for brutality. In addition to the main cartels, smaller cartels and autonomous gangs participate in drug-related violence.

The main fronts in the war are Nuevo Laredo and Tijuana, both on the U.S. border. In those cities, police officials have been killed, rival gangs have fought each other with heavy weapons, and U.S. citizens have gone missing. In recent months, however, Acapulco has become increasingly violent as the fighting spreads.

MEXICO: A new poll released by El Universal newspaper gives Mexico's Felipe Calderon from the conservative National Action Party the lead ahead of the July 2 presidential elections. Calderon is preferred by 39 percent of respondents, against 35 percent for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the Democratic Revolution Party and 21 percent for Roberto Madrazo of the Institutional Revolution Party. This is the first time that an El Universal poll has given the lead to Calderon, who is now the front-runner in all the opinion polls released in the past three weeks.

BEYOND THE LAWA 'Black Hole' on a Porous BorderCorrupt police and complicit citizens make Jacume a forbidding redoubt where smugglers of drugs and immigrants operate with a sense of impunity. 'They own the place,' says a Mexican official.By Robert J. Lopez, Richard Marosi and Rich Connell, Times Staff WritersMay 21, 2006

Perched on a ridge a few hundred yards from the international line, an A-frame house with a wraparound balcony gives smugglers a 180-degree view of U.S. border defenses.

Spotters track the movement of Border Patrol agents with binoculars and use two-way radios to steer drug runners and human traffickers through unguarded areas.

As agents closed in on suspected smugglers last summer, lookouts on the Mexican side bombarded them with rocks and retreated to the A-frame.

"They have the high ground on us," said Sonia Spaulding, the supervising Border Patrol agent during the attack. "They can see our every move."

Jacume is a "black hole," an enclave largely beyond the control of authorities on either side of the border because of its remote location, complicit residents and corrupt Mexican police. Jacume has flourished as a launch pad for smuggling of drugs and people since U.S. authorities stiffened border defenses near San Diego a decade ago. Traffickers simply moved their operations east, into the forbidding valleys and mountain passes surrounding the village. As President Bush prepares to use National Guard troops to help seal the border, Jacume and places like it represent a formidable challenge and illustrate why the U.S., as Bush noted, "has not been in complete control of its borders" ? and may never be.

Mile-for-mile, more drugs are seized in this area than almost anywhere else along the California line. In the last fiscal year, federal agents captured an average of 400 pounds of marijuana and 660 migrants each month. In the first eight months of this fiscal year, drug seizures are nearly triple last year's total.

Jacume residents have become beholden to smugglers whose activities pump cash into the community. Mexican federal agents have been taken hostage here. Police won't enter the town without heavily armed backup, so entrenched are the traffickers and their supporters.

"They own the place," said Armando Vale Saldate, civilian director of the Tecate Police Department, which oversees Jacume.

Little is known publicly about the inner workings of Jacume's smuggling economy. But confidential law enforcement documents, as well as interviews with residents, smugglers and U.S. and Mexican officials, reveal layers of corruption extending from the traffickers to top police officials and the ruthless Arellano-Felix drug cartel.

The A-frame with the strategic vantage point is used by a convicted drug felon who is "the leader of an immigrant trafficking organization," according to a report by the Mexican attorney general's office and other sources.

Complaints filed secretly by officers of the Tecate Police Department and reviewed by The Times say a top commander and other supervisors collected thousands of dollars a week in protection money from smugglers moving drugs and migrants across the frontier.

Smuggling Is a Mainstay

Tucked into an isolated high desert valley 70 miles east of Tijuana, Jacume sits at the end of a rutted dirt road. Swirls of dust and headlights announce approaching vehicles long before they pass an old chicken farm and the rusted shells of abandoned cars en route to the village's small plaza.

Founded 80 years ago as communal farm, the town has a few hundred residents, many of them related to one another. In the small grid of dirt roads and cinder-block homes, there are two restaurants, a few mom-and-pop markets and a small church with whitewashed walls.

Smuggling is an economic mainstay. Residents pocket up to $50 a day ? about 10 times the minimum day's wage in Mexico ? for each northbound migrant they harbor in their homes or farms. Storing drugs can earn them hundreds of dollars more. Merchants cater to the migrants' needs.

"It's good business for everybody around here," said Mario Ramirez, who operates Jacume's main restaurant. "People need to eat and need water."

Government authority has long been tenuous here.

In 1998, residents took two Mexican federal agents hostage for extorting money from smugglers, according to Mexican authorities. The captives were freed after an agreement was reached: The agents would return the money, and the smugglers would not file complaints against them.

A few years later, unarmed Mexican immigration agents who chased a suspected smuggler's car into Jacume were greeted by bat-wielding residents. The agents retreated without making an arrest and now rarely enter the town, said immigration officer Felipe Flores.

The alleged smuggler said to use the A-frame is Israel Martinez, 37, according to confidential law enforcement records and sources.

He came to the attention of U.S. investigators in 1995, when officers stopped two pickup trucks on the U.S. side of the fence across from Jacume and found 450 pounds of marijuana inside, according to San Diego Deputy Dist. Atty. Steve Walter. Martinez and another man were arrested.

Martinez pleaded guilty to transporting marijuana and was sentenced to two years in California state prison. He was later deported.

U.S. authorities, working with Mexican agents, have launched a new investigation of Martinez and his suspected smuggling network.

Martinez's organization employs guides on foot, drivers and lookouts to shepherd drugs and people across the frontier, according to law enforcement records and sources.

Mexican and U.S. sources who have interviewed traffickers in custody, including alleged members of Martinez's group, say his organization is suspected of moving large quantities of marijuana across the border for the Arellano-Felix cartel, a Tijuana-based syndicate that controls drug trafficking across Baja California.

Efforts to reach Martinez for comment were unsuccessful.

A relative claimed to have no knowledge of Martinez's involvement in trafficking and said he went into hiding after 20 armed men stormed his home in Jacume in September.

The men, some with bandannas covering their faces, were looking for money and for Martinez, according to the relative, who asked not to be identified.

Investigators say his organization remains active. Martinez is not the first suspected of exploiting the views afforded by Jacume's hills.

A smuggler named Jaime Ochoa, alias "El Cachetes," or Cheeks, allegedly directed runs from tree platforms on his property.

In one of the few successful raids ever conducted in Jacume, a federal SWAT team from Mexico City posing as telephone repairmen stormed Ochoa's home three years ago. U.S. investigators pressed for action after learning that Ochoa might be operating a smuggling tunnel.

The Mexican agents found binoculars, two-way radios, an Uzi submachine gun, a map of smuggling routes and what appeared to be a partially dug passageway, according to U.S. and Mexican authorities.

Ochoa was caught fleeing in a pickup truck and later found guilty of weapons violations, Mexican authorities said.

The raid's success was unusual for Jacume because residents often tip off smugglers, said a U.S. agent who participated in the operation.

"We usually come back empty-handed," he said.

'I Like Police Raids'

The sun-baked hills and valleys between Tecate and Jacume, where the Arellano-Felix cartel stores and moves marijuana, is territory that has been overseen by Daniel Mora, until recently police commander for the area.

For Mora and other officers, who earn as little as $600 a month, patrolling this terrain involves a stark choice: Take a stand against the traffickers, or join them.

As Mora tells it, he's the kind who takes a stand.

Squat, with a thin mustache, he started as an officer in Tijuana. His left eyebrow and scalp bear scars from a head-on car crash with assault suspects. He has been involved in three shootouts and numerous operations against drug and car-theft rings ? some in the Jacume area.

"I like police raids," the 33-year-old Mora says.

After three years in Tecate, he was promoted to commander. But last year he was suspended, demoted and banned from patrolling Jacume and other trafficking hot spots because of suspicions that he was in league with smugglers.

The Mexican attorney general's office is investigating the allegations.

Among information turned over to investigators are a dozen unsigned complaints e-mailed to the Tecate city internal affairs office. The authors, who identified themselves as police officers, said Mora and five supervisors, including one now overseeing Jacume, were running a protection racket.

One complaint, written in January, said Mora is tied to 10 human smugglers and drug traffickers and receives $5,000 a week in payoffs.

"We are asking with all our heart that these personnel ? stop interfering with public safety," said another complaint, received in February.

Contacted by The Times, the authors of the complaints said in e-mails that they feared for their lives and declined to reveal their names or answer questions.

Smugglers detained by Mexican officials have said they paid Mora a "quota" or had "an arrangement" with him to operate in the Tecate area, according to interview records.

Mora said the allegations are groundless and originate with disgruntled colleagues.

"It's political," Mora said in an interview at a San Diego-area restaurant. He predicted that he would be cleared, adding: "I'm not going to run, because I have absolutely nothing to hide."

Bold and Brazen

Lawlessness spills across the border from Jacume and into the United States month after month. An episode last summer, described in federal court records and interviews, underscores the smugglers' brazenness and sense of impunity.

One night in August, a white Chevrolet Suburban made its way through the village. It stopped at a ranch and an abandoned home, picking up half a dozen migrants who had paid up to $2,000 each to get to the U.S.

They squeezed into the SUV, alongside suitcases stuffed with 700 pounds of marijuana, a load worth more than half a million dollars. The vehicle's front bumper was reinforced with steel, and its tires were filled with silicon to withstand the spike strips used by U.S. border agents.

After snaking through town, the SUV rolled up to the international divide, where a pickup truck waited. Its driver yanked open a section of rusty fence that had been pre-cut by smugglers.

A hand-painted sign on the Jacume side of the border fence bade the migrants farewell: To the north is work and prosperity, but don't forget where you came from.

The SUV driver shot through the gap toward Interstate 8, a couple of miles away.

A short while later, a Border Patrol anti-smuggling team saw the SUV driving slowly and a California Highway Patrol officer pulled the vehicle over. As the officer stepped out of his car, the SUV driver made a daring move. He switched off the lights and raced up an offramp heading west toward San Diego in eastbound lanes.

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CHP officers chased the vehicle. Up ahead, more patrol units weaved across lanes with their lights flashing, trying to hold back traffic and prevent a head-on crash.

Spike strips were thrown on the road. But the Suburban sailed over the devices. The migrants inside later told investigators the SUV had hit speeds as high as 90 mph. One remembered praying as sirens blared and lights flashed around them. "Get down and don't move!" the driver yelled in Spanish.

Seconds later, he smashed into a patrol car. The SUV veered to a halt and the driver bolted into heavy brush, escaping toward the border.

Five migrants were rounded up. They identified the driver as 26-year-old Jovanni Mendoza, according to court records.

In 2002, he was arrested by Border Patrol agents after a foot chase north of Jacume, suspected of driving a van crammed with 31 illegal immigrants. He was released after the migrants refused to identify the driver.

Last spring, Border Patrol agents fired at a blue Suburban registered to Mendoza as it allegedly tried to run them down at a U.S. checkpoint northwest of Jacume. The SUV took off on the wrong side of Interstate 8. Agents could not identify the driver.

A week after the wrong-way crash, Border Patrol received reports of a Suburban on a suspected smuggling run near the same stretch of Interstate 8. A vehicle matching that description was stopped at a checkpoint.

Mendoza was behind the wheel. He now faces 12 counts of smuggling humans and drugs and has pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in San Diego. His arrest has done little to slow the pace of cross-border crime in Jacume.

Earlier this month, residents alerted Border Patrol agents when they saw a vehicle using metal ramps to drive over a low section of the fence near Jacume. When the vehicle fled, agents threw spike strips on the road, shredding its tires. The vehicle lost control and flipped. One thousand pounds of marijuana was found inside.

Within days, two more loads of marijuana ? 700 pounds each ? were intercepted coming out of Jacume.

"There's no bottom to their well," said a Border Patrol agent, standing guard one evening near the bullet-riddled fence below the A-frame house. "It just keeps coming."

Mexican President Vicente Fox will visit three U.S. states May 23-27, where he will address recent developments on the U.S. debate about immigration. Among these developments are U.S. President George W. Bush's May 15 proposal to deploy National Guard forces along the U.S.-Mexico border and his support for a guest-worker program. They also include the rekindled debate on border security and immigration reform in the U.S. Senate, which approved measures on both topics during the past week. The U.S. debates on border security and immigration reform resonate as strongly in Mexico as they do in the United States.

Analysis

Mexican President Vicente Fox will visit Utah, Washington and California, May 23-27. While the visit was planned some time ago, the agenda and talking points of Fox's trip will focus on the past week's developments in the U.S. immigration-reform and border-security debates. Among these developments are U.S. President George W. Bush's May 15 proposal to deploy National Guard forces along the U.S.-Mexico border and his support for a guest-worker program. They also include the rekindled debate on border security and immigration reform in the U.S. Senate, which approved measures on both topics during the past week. The Senate has also voted to build a fence along sections of the U.S. border, to establish English as the official language for government activities and to allow illegal immigrants possible citizenship under certain conditions.

A Deeply Rooted Issue

Without doubt, human migration tops the bilateral agenda between the United States and Mexico. Emigration from Mexico to the United States has deep historical and economic roots. It also affects a great number of Mexicans, who increasingly have relatives and friends who have immigrated to the United States, both legally and illegally. Thus, any change in the situation of the Mexican immigrants in the United States has major economic, social and political consequences in Mexico.

As we have previously discussed, immigration to the United States from Mexico is different from immigration to the United States from other countries due to history and geography. And while the flow of people coming from Mexico into the United States has existed for many, many years, these numbers exploded in the last 25 years. Thus, between 1.2 million and 1.5 million Mexicans immigrated to the United States during the 1970s, around 2.3 million did so during the 1980s, and around 3.3 million did so during the 1990s.

During World War II, the United States approached the issue by establishing a guest-worker plan known as the Bracero Program, which lasted until 1964. During its existence, the Bracero Program served as the most significant source of Mexican labor in the United States. After the program ended, with a limited number of visas available, many Mexicans crossed the border without official documentation. Several factors in Mexico prompted this exodus.

The Mexican economy experienced a series of crises in 1976, 1981-82, 1986 and 1994-95, which increased Mexico's relative poverty levels and hindered its economic performance. These crises generated the conditions for the continually increasing rate of Mexicans immigrating to the United States. Most other Latin American countries suffered deep economic crises during the 1970s and 1980s and political instability, yet they did not produce the number of immigrants to the United States that Mexico did. Mexico, by contrast, passed through these economic episodes with little political turmoil and largely pacific power transitions, and even so huge numbers of emigrants went north. Geography and -- more importantly -- economics explain the difference.

Mexico's Economic Safety Valves

Emigration toward the north became one of two very important safety valves for the Mexican economy, one successive Mexican governments used to maintain domestic social and political stability. The other safety valve was the notable increase in the informal sector of the Mexican economy. Emigration was traditionally a safety valve for rural areas while the informal economy served urban centers.

Over the years, however, the number and origin of Mexican immigrants to the United States has evolved. During the 1970s and 1980s, most of the Mexican immigrants to the United States came from Mexico's poorest and more rural states -- the same states most closely linked to the Bracero Program. Since the 1990s, however, that has changed. According to the Mexican Population Council, new immigrants to the United States come from all of Mexico's regions, and their gender and economic background diversity is growing.

Estimates of the number of Mexican immigrants to the United States vary, but hover around 10 million to 11 million people, which includes those of both legal and illegal status -- around 10 percent of the number of people living in Mexico. Estimates also hold that the informal economy in Mexico covers another 10 million to 15 million people. Combined, this means almost a quarter of the Mexican population is either not formally employed or is outside of the country. Starting in 1986, successive Mexican administrations engaged in fundamental economic reforms with the entry of Mexico into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization, or WTO). The nation's economic crises were so deep-seated, however, that even the WTO-inspired reforms have not helped the Mexican economy grow fast enough to provide enough jobs for Mexico's swelling labor force.

Along with previous Mexican governments, the Fox administration has found that using the two aforementioned safety valves has greatly helped maintain social order. Mexico City sees Mexican immigration to the United States as a win-win situation for both countries, since the immigration safety valve means the United States does not have an unstable neighbor to its south.

The Importance of Remittances

As the number of Mexican migrants to the United States has increased, so have their money transfers to their families in Mexico. In 2005, Mexican migrants in the United States remitted around $18 billion back to Mexico -- an extremely important source of cash for Mexico, roughly equal to foreign direct investment in the country. The Mexican government clearly does not want these remittances from the United States to disappear.

The Fox administration has established programs to match every dollar received from Mexicans in the United States with money put into projects to improve infrastructure. All of the contenders in Mexico's July 2 presidential election have proposals on how to better use those resources, from improving those matching funds to establishing a structural fund to transfer money to impoverished regions of Mexico, as is done in the European Union. Thus, massive deportations of Mexicans from the United States would have immense economic and political consequences in Mexico.

The Mexican government also needs to walk a fine line between working closely with the United States and not appearing too subservient to Washington. For historical reasons, Mexico has a love-hate relationship with the United States. In the past couple of decades, this relationship has tilted more toward the love part of the equation. The signing of the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) in particular shifted the historical equation. In general, Mexicans believe a close relationship with the United States is inevitable, and largely beneficial for both. Even so, they resent any perceived heavy-handed attempts -- or even suggestions -- by the United States to force policy on Mexico. Mexicans expect their government to respond harshly to the United States when needed, as long as those responses are kept on the rhetorical level.

Fox Falls Short

The Fox administration has worked to push for a migration agreement allowing Mexican nationals to cross the border and work freely in the United States on the premise that given geography and economics, the flow north from Mexico cannot be blocked successfully; something similar to what Fox proposed may in fact come to pass. But Fox pushed too hard, and was unable to convince many on the U.S. side that he was fulfilling his part of the job of ensuring border security.

Much of the U.S. resentment against perceptions that Mexico is not adequately securing its side of the border stem from the fact that while the Mexican government allowed its two economic safety valves to develop, it also allowed another development to flourish: drug trafficking and organized crime. This has led to a border security problem of considerable size, one that has accelerated over the past two to three years. Drug cartels operating in the border cities have become more violent, which has in turn fueled the security concerns of people living in the border region. While the Fox administration has tried to fight these cartels, the violence has increased -- thus complicating his efforts to push for immigration reform in the United States.

Whether the new Mexican administration taking office Dec. 1 will be any more effective in fighting the drug cartels than the Fox administration has been remains unknown. Changing public opinion in the United States, however, will require a more effective Mexican response to drug crime on the border.

A Not-So New Direction

Whichever political party wins the July 2 Mexican presidential election, the new government's position on border issues will be very similar to the current position. The Mexican government will always oppose the construction of any fence or wall, since most Mexicans deeply resent such a prospect. It will also oppose any attempt to turn illegal immigrants in the United States into felons because of the ill economic effects this would have in Mexico. And it will not follow any U.S. suggestions that it work to stop Mexicans from crossing into the United States, perhaps pointing out that the U.S. government does not prevent its citizens from leaving the United States as they please. What could change is the level of cooperation between the Mexican and U.S. governments.

Before Vicente Fox's arrival, Mexican governments were not as active in advocating for issues that concerned the Mexican community inside the United States. In contrast, Fox has advocated, for example, for the pardon of U.S. death-row inmates of Mexican origin. Nor did previous Mexican administrations make much noise when Mexican nationals were killed on the U.S. side of the border -- they did protest, but not with Fox's volume. Previous governments also adamantly opposed publicly acknowledging cooperation with U.S. law enforcement agencies in counternarcotics efforts. Many times, the lack of cooperation was not only rhetorical, but real. That changed with Fox; now there is considerably more U.S-Mexican anti-drug cooperation.

Both Roberto Madrazo from the Mexico's former longtime ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party and his left-wing rival, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from the Democratic Revolutionary Party, will very likely return to the policy of a reduced level of cooperation with U.S. law-enforcement agencies. This reduction will extend past the rhetorical level if the situation on the border deteriorates -- if Mexicans are shot by U.S. authorities, for example. But at the same time, both are also likely to continue Fox's increased activism on issues affecting Mexicans within the United States. The Mexican community in the U.S. is now active politically in Mexican politics, since they can vote on Mexican elections beginning this July. Thus, expatriate Mexicans in the United States are a constituency worth wooing for political candidates in Mexico.

Unlike his rivals, Felipe Calderon from Fox's National Action Party -- the front-runner in the most recent polls -- would very likely maintain and increase cooperation with the United States if elected. Even so, domestic pressures would force him to adopt stances similar to those of his adversaries if killings of Mexican nationals on the border follow from Bush's proposed National Guard deployment.

Changing the Pre-Election Debate

While the Mexican position will not change markedly regardless of which party wins the July presidential election, the proposals under discussion in the United States -- namely the National Guard presence -- could help change the pre-election debate in Mexico, giving the advantage to the candidate best able to capitalize on the issue. Thus, the three main candidates will toughen their rhetoric against U.S. government border security and immigration policies in the final weeks of the campaign, and so will Fox when he visits next week. Some of the Mexican presidential candidates sought to take advantage of the immigration and border issues in the past week. Thus, Calderon criticized Bush's National Guard proposal, and Lopez Obrador criticized Fox for not being tough enough, though he toned down his comments later. By giving voice to the left wing's historical dislike of the United States, Lopez Obrador could be in position to gain the most from the border and immigration debate.

How much impact the issue will have in the run-up to July 2 remains unclear, though it will certainly become an increasingly important part of the agenda in the months before the change of administrations -- and during the entire length of the next administration. For someone like Lopez Obrador, cutting cooperation with Washington and joining the ranks -- at least in the rhetorical sense -- of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and Bolivian President Evo Morales could be attractive if the United States adopts a hard line on immigration.

While the overall positions of the Mexican government are not going to change, this does not mean no solution to border and immigration issues exists. In fact, much can be done to increase border safety. And if the Mexican economy begins to grow at an accelerated pace, it can create enough jobs to reduce the migration flow -- though this would take several years.

TUXTLA GUTI?RREZ, Mexico, May 19 ? Felipe Calder?n loves to make allusions to Mexican folk songs. These days, the conservative candidate for president is particularly fond of recalling a song about a nag named Rel?mpago who upsets a glistening champion, Moro, in a race.

Felipe Calder?n, of the National Action Party, speaking to voters last week in Tonal?, Mexico. "I was not the favorite," he boomed over loudspeakers to a crowd of farmers, fishermen and business owners in the town of Tonal? on a swing in Chiapas on Thursday. "I was not the one who was up in the polls, but do you know what I did, gentlemen? I went to work. I set about telling Mexicans what each candidate really stands for."

After six months in second place, Mr. Calder?n has surged past the front-runner, Andr?s Manuel L?pez Obrador, with a stream of attack advertisements portraying him as a dangerous and violent leftist who will bankrupt the country.

Now, a month before the vote, the race is a contest between Mr. Calder?n, a free-trade advocate backed by business leaders, and Mr. L?pez Obrador, a leftist who draws most of his support from poor people who feel that free-trade policies have failed to help them.

For his part, Mr. L?pez Obrador, 53, who was mayor of Mexico City until last year, dismisses the recent polls as "propaganda" and claims the numbers have been massaged to undercount working-class voters. Under his stewardship, Mexico City's finances remained solid. As for the charge that he is dangerous, he calls it simply ludicrous.

Mr. Calder?n, 43, a former congressman and energy minister, has engineered the turnaround with a nimble, slick campaign, relying heavily on radio and television advertisements, many of them negative, tested in focus groups and tailored to specific constituencies, his aides say. Mexicans vote July 2.

Mr. Calder?n, of President Vicente Fox's National Action Party, has outspent Mr. L?pez Obrador two to one on attack ads that, among other things, link the left-leaning candidate to Hugo Ch?vez, Venezuela's anti-American president. He has also deftly played on the perception that Mr. L?pez Obrador, of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, has an authoritarian streak and a reputation as a rabble-rouser because of raucous protests against election fraud he led over a decade ago. Mr. Calder?n's ads call his rival "a danger to Mexico."

The personal attacks on Mr. L?pez Obrador were among several strategic shifts by Mr. Calder?n's young campaign team in late March. Mr. Calder?n now embraces President Fox, after first keeping him at arm's length, and staunchly defends the government's record on social programs and the economy.

Mr. Calder?n has also dropped his stuffy stump speech about the virtues of open markets and foreign investment, opting for a simpler message: he now vows to create jobs, jobs and more jobs. His ads call him the "president of employment," and his slogan is "My job will be to make sure you have a job."

One thing that unites the candidates is their opposition to President Bush's plan to build a wall along the border and deploy the National Guard. Both say the way to stop illegal immigration is to create more jobs and investment in Mexico.

Mr. Calder?n has also stolen a page from Mr. L?pez Obrador, who promises a raft of government subsidies and handouts. Mr. Calder?n, a fiscal and social conservative, now makes a point of saying he will extend and expand the welfare and health care programs Mr. Fox put in place. The promise to keep government largesse flowing draws the biggest applause at his rallies.

The upshot has been a remarkable political comeback. In January, five major surveys by respected pollsters showed Mr. Calder?n trailing Mr. L?pez Obrador by 6 to 10 percentage points. In April and May, however, all five polls showed the race tightening with a slim lead for Mr. Calder?n.

"We've managed to change the subject of the election," said Juan Camilo Mouri?o, 34, Mr. Calder?n's campaign manager, as he sat behind his desk in a dark blue suit at campaign headquarters, checking sports scores on a new laptop.

Mr. Mouri?o said the inner circle of the campaign had a fierce debate before deciding to bombard Mr. L?pez Obrador with negative advertisements. An attempt to knock him off the ballot for ignoring a court order failed badly last year, only making him more popular. The conventional wisdom was, the more you attack Mr. L?pez Obrador, the stronger he gets by casting himself as the victim of a conspiracy.

But Mr. Calder?n was trailing by 10 percentage points in late February. His free-trade message and "Passion and Values for Mexico" slogan was falling flat. "We had to make adjustments," Mr. Mouri?o said. One of the architects of the new campaign was Antonio Sol?, 34, a Spanish political consultant who was a top consultant to former Prime Minister Jos? Mar?a Aznar.

Mr. Mouri?o said he also had several informal conversations about the campaign with Dick Morris, the American consultant who once worked for former President Bill Clinton, but the Calder?n team decided not to hire him.

Mr. L?pez Obrador's campaign has been slow to respond. Until recently, the candidate had resisted advice to respond to mudslinging with mudslinging of his own. Only this week did his party broadcast a radio spot calling Mr. Calder?n "a liar."

Besides taking his time to go on the offensive, Mr. L?pez Obrador has made other gaffes, his aides concede. In February, he ridiculed Mr. Fox, called him a chattering bird and told him to "shut up" and stay out of the campaign, handing Mr. Calder?n fodder for his claim that Mr. L?pez Obrador is intolerant.

The leftist's decision in April to pass up the first debate, a classic front-runner's tactic, also backfired. Most analysts say it contributed to the notion that he can be arrogant, and contemptuous of other viewpoints. Mr. L?pez Obrador has also refused to let his aides use his modest lifestyle or his close relationship with his sons to soften his image, some inside the campaign say.

As for the polls, Mr. L?pez Obrador says they are the fabrications of media barons in a conspiracy to defeat him. (His aides maintain that their internal polls show he fell behind early this month, but has regained ground and now leads Mr. Calder?n by six percentage points.)

Mr. L?pez Obrador has stubbornly insisted on running a grass-roots campaign that relies more on speeches in town squares, loudspeakers atop cars and word of mouth than on television and radio spots, his campaign aides say. That decision could turn out to be a stroke of genius or his biggest mistake.

"The strategy will stay the same, because that's Andr?s Manuel's way of campaigning," said Ricardo Monreal, a senior aide. "His way of campaigning is, as always before, street by street, town by town, at the level of the people. He believes he will beat the marketing campaign that way."

Mr. Monreal added: "We all know that marketing has carried a lot of current presidents into office around the world. But L?pez Obrador isn't relying on this. He is relying on the strategy of the street."

Still, Mr. L?pez Obrador has made some adjustments, said C?sar Y??ez, his spokesman and a close adviser. For months, the candidate avoided interviews, unless they were with local radio stations. He has always been obsessive about controlling his message.

In the last two weeks, however, he has submitted to three interviews on national television. He even let himself be lampooned on a morning show by a political satirist who wears a clown outfit.

He has also begun to needle Mr. Calder?n. Last week, he said the conservative candidate was a captive of his campaign advisers.

Mr. Calder?n has kept up the invective. In Chiapas on Thursday, he leapt on Mr. L?pez Obrador's comment that President Fox was "a puppet" of the United States because of his restrained criticism of the United States Senate's support for more walls along the border.

President Ch?vez of Venezuela had used the same word to describe Mr. Fox last fall, and Mr. Calder?n did not let the chance pass to tar Mr. L?pez Obrador again with the Ch?vez brush. "He's an intolerant man, a very aggressive man, a hostile man and he has devoted himself to insulting the president," he said of his rival. Mr. L?pez Obrador, however, has kept his distance from Mr. Ch?vez.

The managers of both campaigns say the race is too close to call. The camps agree that the final debate on June 6, the only face-to-face confrontation between Mr. Calder?n and Mr. L?pez Obrador, will be pivotal.

"The debate will be important, and I say the dirty war has a limit in its impact on the election," Senator Ortega said.

Kaibiles: The New Lethal Force in the Mexican Drug WarsThe investigation into the April beheadings of two Mexican police officers in the Pacific resort city of Acapulco has led to the Kaibiles, Guatemalan special forces deserters who have taken on the role of hired guns for Mexico's Gulf cartel, one of the most powerful drug cartels operating in the country.

Acapulco is fast becoming a battleground for cartels vying for control of drug-trafficking supply routes. The Zetas, the Mexican version of the Kaibiles, already are fighting on the Gulf cartel's side against skinhead gangs hired by the Beltran Leyva brothers, leaders of the rival Sinaloa cartel. With Mexican anti-drug authorities bearing down on the cartel, however, Kaibiles -- as many as 40, according to Mexico's attorney general -- were brought in to assist the Zetas in dealing with that front. With the Kaibiles now in the mix, fighting is likely to increase in the near future.

The Kaibiles, who are particularly brutal fighters trained in unconventional tactics, are infamous for forcing recruits to bite the heads off live chickens during training. In February 1999, the U.N. Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), a body established after Guatemala's civil war to investigate human rights abuses that occurred during the conflict, harshly criticized the Kaibiles, citing human rights abuses. Kaibil actions during fighting in the 1980s made the group one of the most feared special forces units in Latin America. According to the CEH, for instance, Kaibil units responding to guerrilla attacks near the Guatemalan town of Las Dos Erres in December 1982 entered a village believed to be sympathetic to rebel groups. Although the Kaibiles reportedly found no weapons caches or guerrillas, they proceeded to conduct a two-day purge, killing everyone in the village, including women and children.

As part of a national reconciliation process following Guatemala's civil war, the Guatemalan army has been restructuring and transforming its units, and has since dropped the name "Kaibil" from its special forces units, referring to them only as the Special Forces Brigade. The units have participated in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Africa.

On Sept. 10, 2005, Mexican authorities arrested seven Guatemalan nationals in the southern Chiapas town of Comitan for smuggling weapons into Mexico. Guatemalan authorities later confirmed that at least four of the seven were former Kaibiles who had deserted their special operations unit at different times, the most recent one in 2004. Unlike the Zetas, the majority of whom deserted at the same time, Kaibiles apparently have been deserting in small numbers for several years now.

A former high-ranking Mexican military official, Gen. Ramon Mota Sanchez, said in an October 2005 interview that former Mexican soldiers who deserted to join the Zetas possibly were trained by Kaibiles. Between 1994 and 1999, he said, Kaibiles trained several dozen Mexican special operations soldiers.

After the end of wars in Central America, bands of militants, mercenaries and death squads suddenly found themselves without a war to fight. Like many of these groups, the Kaibiles looked abroad for work as hired guns, some of them entering the Mexican drug scene through contacts with the Zetas. Special forces units in one region often will share training or establish partnerships with neighboring units.

The presence of Kaibiles in Mexico has introduced an additional foreign element into the Mexican drug wars, along with Mara Salvatrucha from El Salvador and Calle 18 gangs from Guatemala. With the well-trained and brutal Kaibiles and Zetas now in the mix, however, Mexico's drug wars are likely to get even uglier. Moreover, it is only a question of time before their level of violence reaches fronts in the drug war on the U.S. border, such as Tijuana and Nuevo Laredo.

Mexico's presidential race has become a very close contest. The latest polls show the conservative National Action Party's candidate Felipe Calderon tied with the Democratic Revolutionary Party's candidate, left-leaning former Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador; Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Roberto Madrazo is not far behind. On June 6, the candidates will meet for their second and last televised debate. Whoever wins that will have a good chance of winning the July 2 election.

Analysis

The final weeks of Mexico's presidential campaign have seen it become a very close race. After several months of leading the competition in virtually every opinion poll, left-wing Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador from the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) lost that position in May to Felipe Calderon from President Vicente Fox's National Action Party (PAN). The latest voter intention surveys indicate that Lopez Obrador and Calderon are tied, with Roberto Madrazo of the formerly long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) not far behind.

As recently as five weeks ago, Lopez Obrador looked like the certain winner. He held a modest but consistent lead in opinion polls, which gave him the initiative to set the campaign and policy agenda. In an attempt to protect his lead, Lopez Obrador decided not to attend the first televised debate, opting to attack Fox instead. After two false starts, Calderon finally found a way to exploit Lopez Obrador's weaknesses and launched an advertising campaign comparing Lopez Obrador to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The campaign proved to be a success. Meanwhile, Madrazo has been trying to plug the holes that widespread scandals and internal discord have made in the PRI's ship.

The candidates' second and last televised debate, slated for June 6, is the most prominent event before the July 2 election The victor is likely to have a definitive advantage when voters go to the polls. Though the race has become more competitive, no candidate has created much excitement among the voters, and a large portion of the electorate will not even bother to vote. Furthermore, the soccer World Cup -- which will be held in Germany from June 9 through July 9 -- is expected to decrease voter attention even more. The three main candidates' electoral strategy is to try to get into first place before the World Cup begins, and the upcoming debate is likely their biggest chance to win over the undecided voters and consolidate their support bases.

Having lost his position as front-runner, Lopez Obrador also lost the impression of inevitability he was trying to bring to the upcoming debate. He has dismissed every poll that does not give him the advantage, maintaining that his own numbers say otherwise. He said in an ad on national television this week that he is focusing on just one segment of the electorate: those who earn less than $800 a month, to whom he proposed giving cash handouts as soon as he becomes president. The problem is that he would be dispensing those handouts to a great majority of the Mexican population, and he has yet to figure out where the money would come from. Lopez Obrador will continue attacking Fox, Calderon and the PAN's role in the bank bailout after the 1994-1995 financial crisis, which he considered a cover-up to protect rich bankers, even though Fox, Calderon and the PAN were not in power at the time. Also, having lost many of the "independent voters" who once sided with him, Lopez Obrador will appeal directly to voters identified with the PRI and try to win over those in the party's left wing to supplement the support from his own PRD.

Calderon, in turn, has had a tough time generating enthusiasm beyond his party base. Despite being the youngest of the candidates, he represents a brand of social conservatism that has not gone over well with the youngest voters. However, he could persuade many voters leaning toward Lopez Obrador that the PRD candidate poses a grave economic risk. Calderon's message that associates Lopez Obrador with Chavez and highlights his willingness to go on a spending spree once in power has played well in the northern states, where Calderon has consolidated a wide margin. However, he seems to have won over all those who can be convinced by that strategy, and he does not yet have sufficient support to win the election.

Madrazo, who has the highest personal negative ratings from voters, has been unable to run a consistent campaign. His run has been marred by scandals and party infighting -- some of which he is responsible for, and most of which was engineered by his opponents within the PRI. The scandals have put the once-invincible PRI on the verge of falling into third place, a position from which it would be hard to recover. Despite all that, the PRI has shown extraordinary resilience, and Madrazo is hoping that low voter turnout will allow him to take advantage of the party machinery's "get out the vote" strategy. Madrazo is also appealing to the segment of the population targeted by Lopez Obrador, saying he will help but without endangering the country's economic well-being. Madrazo also will relentlessly attack Calderon to undermine his support in the north.

Opinion polls after the debate could give a good indication of which candidate was able to win over the small segment of the electorate that is up for grabs. Economic and public security issues will dominate the debate. The candidates are not likely to pay much attention to the most prominent item on the U.S.-Mexican agenda -- immigration -- during the debate or during the rest of the campaign, unless there are incidents along the border involving the U.S. National Guard that result in the deaths of Mexican nationals. Such an event would directly affect Calderon, who would be identified with Fox's acquiescence to the U.S. National Guard deployment to the border.

This presidential election is the first in which Mexico is allowing absentee voting for Mexicans living abroad. This was a long-standing demand from the Mexican community in the United States, which accounts for an overwhelming majority of Mexicans living outside Mexico. Politicians had stalled on the issue for various reasons, but an eleventh-hour attempt in 2005 finally succeeded in allowing absentee voting. Of an estimated 4 million potential voters outside the country, only about 300,000 registered to vote, and even fewer will actually vote. The reasons for this are varied, but one major reason is that Mexicans living abroad whose status is not legal could be afraid of being identified if they send their votes. The number of registered Mexican voters outside Mexico will increase, and then the Mexican community in the United States will become an active constituency. This is likely to change the dynamics between Mexico City and Washington.

MEXICO: Mexican presidential candidates face off in the second and last televised debate before the July 2 election. In Mexico City, unidentified assailants shoot at an armored vehicle carrying the wife and children of Carlos Ahumada, a jailed businessman closely associated with corruption scandals involving an array of politicians from the leftist Party of the Democratic Revolution. Ahumada has already released videos with evidence against the politicians. His lawyers announced June 5 they would release four new videos containing evidence against close associates of presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Ahumada's wife and children were not injured.